Joe Hart on Life After Pep at Manchester City
Joe Hart has lived this before. The parade, the medals, the sense that the hard part is done – and then the brutal realisation that the real fight is only just starting.
As the Premier League season looms, the questions are piling up. What does Manchester City look like without Pep Guardiola? Can Enzo Maresca survive the glare? And are Arsenal really ready for the grind of being the team everyone wants to beat?
Life after Pep at City
Guardiola is gone after a decade of almost relentless success. In his place at Etihad Stadium stands Enzo Maresca, a coach with ideas, a clear philosophy – and a shadow the size of a dynasty hanging over him.
Hart, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live's Monday Night Club, believes the fiercest pressure will not come from the boardroom.
"I think the club isn't heaping massive expectation on this season," he said. City, he feels, still trust the squad and the structure. They still expect to compete. They just won't demand instant perfection from a manager stepping into the most daunting job in English football.
Inside the club, Hart sees realism. Outside it, he sees a storm brewing.
"Maresca will come immediately under fire in terms of how people want to jump all over Man City if they do struggle," he warned. The first wobble, the first bad week, and the narrative writes itself: life after Pep, and a giant slipping.
A rebuild on the fly
City are not standing still, but this is not a straightforward reload.
They briefly broke the British transfer record to bring in Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m – a huge fee and a clear statement of faith in the 21-year-old midfielder. At the same time, they look likely to lose Rodri, Spain's World Cup Golden Ball winner, to Barcelona. That is not a normal outgoing. That is the heartbeat of a team being ripped out.
Talks are ongoing for 18-year-old Morocco midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi from Lille at £85.6m, and the club still want Chelsea’s Argentina international Enzo Fernandez. Big names, big numbers, big ideas. But also big change.
All of this comes after a jolt: a 3-0 defeat by Arsenal in the Community Shield in Cardiff. A curtain-raiser, yes. But also a reminder that transition, even at City, can be messy.
Hart, who won two league titles with the club, senses a shift in tone from within.
"I still feel they'll want to be pushing on all fronts," he said. "But the same sort of pressure, as an organisation, I don't think will be on this season… I don't think they're going to be put under that pressure internally.
"Internally, I think they're intelligent enough as a business to understand that what's going on right now is going to be difficult."
That word – difficult – has rarely applied to City’s domestic life over the past decade. Yet here they are, trying to move from one era to another without losing their grip.
Arsenal step into the champion’s spotlight
While City wrestle with evolution, Arsenal are about to discover the other side of success.
From 2020-21 to 2023-24, City won four titles in a row. The past two seasons, they have fallen just short. Arsenal have climbed. Now they must stay there.
Hart knows exactly what awaits them. He won the league with City in 2011-12 and 2013-14. Neither title was defended.
"I was walking on water at that time," he admitted. "I actually thought I was 'that guy'.
Then reality bit.
"Football finds a way, really quickly, of showing you that you're not. And when things started to unravel, which they will in any season, [they] seemed to really unravel because all of a sudden [you're under] that kind of champion scrutiny."
That is the shift Arsenal are about to feel. Every dropped point becomes a crisis. Every mistake is magnified. Every opponent raises their game.
Hart sees the key battle not in tactics or transfers, but in mentality.
"It's really important how Arsenal are going to handle that," he said, before praising Mikel Arteta’s approach. The manager, he notes, "has done a brilliant job, and he makes really big decisions and bold decisions."
Arteta has already shown he can build a title-winning side. Now comes the test Hart knows too well: dealing with the first punch to the jaw.
"It's about how you handle that first hurt," Hart said. "It's ironic that getting to the top is the easy thing, it really is."
So City enter a season without Pep, braced for turbulence. Arsenal step into the harsh light of being champions, about to learn how heavy the crown really is.
Only one of them will handle that hurt better.
