Hello and welcome to Telegraph Sport’s live, minute-by-minute coverage of Bournemouth v Manchester City. Unlike most of the young folks travelling to Bournemouth on a Saturday evening, Pep Guardiola would love a nice, quiet night by the coast. Since City beat Bournemouth 6-1 in the return fixture, they have played 14 Premier League games – and only two could be described as comfortable victories. In the rest City either a) didn’t win or b) had to come from behind and/or wait until the last 20 minutes to take the lead.
With Liverpool defying their injury list and Arsenal hitting spectacular form, City can’t afford to drop any points tonight. Bournemouth away is rarely easy, but it gets even tougher after this. City’s next five league games are Man Utd (H), Liverpool (A), Brighton (A), Arsenal (H) and Aston Villa (H).
City are masters of pacing the Premier League marathon, which is why they are quietly on the cusp of more history. No team has ever been English champions four seasons in a row, but City could achieve that – and win a sixth title in seven years. In some ways their era of dominance started at Bournemouth. On 26 August 2017, in the third game of the season, Raheem Sterling scored a 97th-minute winner and City never looked back. They scored 24 goals in the next five league games, didn’t even draw again until New Year’s Eve and finished the second with a record 100 points. The lost season of 2019-20 aside, they have dominated English football ever since.
In the week Sir Jim Ratcliffe said the newly competent Manchester United want to knock City off their perch. They’ll have to join the queue. “All the teams want it,” said Guardiola yesterday. “What I want is Man City, my team, being there. The rest, I don’t care.”
Kick off is at 5.30pm, and we’ll have team news shortly.