da 888casino： With an Erling Haaland-inspired Manchester City perfectly poised to throw their hat into the ring, GOAL looks at the best sides England has ever seen
da apostaganha： After Wednesday night's stunning demolition of Real Madrid, history beckons for Manchester City. Pep Guardiola's magnificent team are now just three wins away from a treble. The Premier League title should be wrapped up either on or before Sunday, when the reigning champions welcome Chelsea to the Etihad Stadium.
Manchester United could prove a tough nut to crack in the FA Cup final, on June 3, but City will be the overwhelming favourites going into that eagerly awaited derby at Wembley.
The same goes for their showdown with Inter in Istanbul. Simone Inzaghi's side are on form and boast an excellent defensive record, but many pundits are already predicting that City will sweep the Italians aside to claim their first Champions League trophy.
If they do, one can be sure that they'll soon be added to GOAL's list of the greatest sides of the Premier League era…
Getty12Leicester City 2015-16
Dilly ding, dilly dong, it's the modern-day miracle of Claudio Ranieri's Leicester City! One could try to argue that the Foxes don't rank as one of the greatest teams in Premier League history, given they won the title with just 81 points and did so during a season when nearly all of England's elite clubs underperformed. Obviously, the fact that Tottenham were Leicester's main challenges for the majority of the 2015-16 campaign tells you everything you need to know about the quality of the opposition.
Would Ranieri's side have beaten any other team on this list? Maybe not, but by God they wouldn't have made life very difficult for any of them. Leicester's defence was excellent, with goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel doing his father Peter proud behind an uncompromising back four led by the magnificent Wes Morgan.
Of course, their lives were made much easier by midfielder N'Golo Kante, who covered so much ground in front of them that he inspired his very own meme… Up front, meanwhile, Jamie Vardy ran riot, the main beneficiary of the wonderful wing play of young Riyad Mahrez, who was voted PFA Players' Player of the Year.
Leicester's game plan may not have been particularly complex, but it was exceptionally effective. They lost just one game during the second half of the season and effectively sealed the title with a run of seven clean sheets in nine games.
Of course, this 5,000-1 fairy tale was about more than Leicester's defensive discipline or clinical counter-attacks. It was a heart-warming story of unexpected success that inspired hope in countless other clubs across the globe, because it proved that even in an era almost completely dominated by money, it's still possible for a well-managed team to not just compete with the big boys, but beat them.
So, while there are indeed stronger sides on this list, there are none, not one, more emblematic of the essence of sport.
AdvertisementGetty11Man Utd 1993-94
On a Friday afternoon in the summer of 1993, Nottingham Forest midfielder Roy Keane verbally agreed a deal with Blackburn Rovers manager Kenny Dalglish to move to Ewood Park. The only trouble was, the club office had already closed for the evening. Dalglish would have to wait until the following Monday for Keane to put pen to paper on a contract. It was at this point that Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson made his move, and effectively altered the course of Premier League history.
United had, of course, won the previous season's title – their first top-flight success for 26 years – but the British-record acquisition of Keane transformed a good team into a great one. Indeed, with Keane working in tandem with the equally combative Paul Ince, every midfield battle became a forgone conclusion, while teams were torn to shreds by the pace of Ryan Giggs and Andrei Kanchelskis out wide.
Mark Hughes battered nearly every defender that had the misfortune to mark him, leaving Eric Cantona free to focus solely on providing a little panache. The Frenchman was at the absolute peak of his powers during the 1993-94 campaign, scoring a career-high 25 goals in all competitions.
Of course, United could also count on a back five of rare character and quality featuring future Premier League legends like Peter Schmeichel and Denis Irwin, so it's easy to understand how Ferguson's first truly exceptional side ended up winning the league by eight points before then routing Chelsea in the FA Cup final.
It has to be said that United disappointed in Europe, knocked out of Champions League by Galatasaray after being welcomed to 'Hell' in Istanbul, but they would have won a domestic treble had they not been upset by Aston Villa in the League Cup final.
Still, a first-ever league-and-FA Cup double was an incredible achievement at the time, and a sign of things to come for a team that would go to a whole other level once Keane became captain in 1997.
Getty10Liverpool 2018-19
This is obviously going to cause controversy. Liverpool's team of 2018-19 didn't actually win the Premier League title. But we're judging teams here on the performances in all competitions over a solitary campaign – and the Reds' results were extraordinary. Truly extraordinary.
The final points haul (97) was, at the time, the third-highest in Premier League history. They boasted two of the three players that shared the Golden Boot, in Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane, while their Virgil van Dijk-led defence kept 21 clean sheets, conceding just 22 times in total, underlining just how complete a team this was.
Liverpool also only lost one league game – three fewer than eventual champions Manchester City – and were only pipped to the title by a solitary point, despite finishing the season with nine successive wins.
However, while Pep Guardiola's men managed to hold their nerve during the title run-in, nobody else in Europe could live with Jurgen Klopp's mentality monsters, who won the Champions League – thanks in no small part to the most extraordinary semi-final comeback the tournament has ever seen, with Liverpool overturning a 3-0 first-leg deficit against Barcelona on a famous, famous night at Anfield.
People can point to the lack of a league title all they want, then, because only the most prejudiced football fan could rationally claim that the Reds of 2018-19 shouldn't be regarded as one of the greatest sides of the Premier League era.
Getty9Man City 2021-22
Pep Guardiola's strongest Manchester City side? Definitely not. But arguably one of his most remarkable.
Granted, City had added Jack Grealish to a title-winning team for a British-record £100 million transfer fee, but the former Aston Villa man contributed next-to-nothing to the team's 2021-22 success, as he himself admitted.
Raheem Sterling was also clearly on the slide, which led to him being sold to Chelsea at the end of the season, while Gabriel Jesus was also offloaded to Arsenal after proving more effective as a industrious winger than a prolific No.9.
And that brings us to the truly impressive thing about this City side – they managed to win the league without a proper goalscorer. After Sergio Aguero's emotional exit, the plan had been to bring in the multi-talented Harry Kane before the season began, but Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy refused to sell his most prized possession – even though the England international effectively went on strike at the start of the season.
It was thought that City might make a late bid for another forward, but Guardiola instead reasoned he could make do without an orthodox striker and, incredibly, he was right. Thanks to the industry and innovation of their vast array of attacking midfielders, City went top in December and stayed there right until the end of the season – despite intense pressure from a resurgent Liverpool.
Indeed, the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden, Mahrez, Ilkay Gundogan and even Rodri stepped up with big goals during the title run-in. It must also be said that Guardiola's use of Joao Cancelo as an auxiliary midfielder proved an inspired decision, with the Portuguese full-back playing a pivotal role in City retaining their Premier League crown.
City's Champions League dream was dashed by a heartbreaking – and still barely believable – collapse at the Bernabeu, but that only made their title triumph all the more commendable, given they managed to recover from that devastating blow – and going two goals down in their final game of the season against Villa – to win the league by a solitary point from Liverpool.
From a tactical and psychological perspective, 2021-22 was something of a masterpiece from Man City.