Premier League Preview: Pressure on City, Arsenal, and Chelsea
The Premier League is about to start with three giant unknowns hanging over it.
What does Manchester City look like without Pep Guardiola? Can Xabi Alonso drag Chelsea back into the elite? And how will Arsenal cope with the weight of defending a title everyone spent years assuming belonged to City?
Joe Hart has lived inside that pressure cooker. Two league titles with City, both followed by failed defences. Now a BBC Sport pundit, he laid out the landscape on BBC Radio 5 Live's Monday Night Club.
Life after Pep: Maresca walks into a storm
Etihad Stadium has grown used to certainty. Guardiola on the touchline, trophies on the stage, City parading silverware around a pitch that became football’s most relentless winning machine.
That era is over.
Enzo Maresca steps into the job with a decade of dominance behind him and a fanbase that no longer measures success in single trophies. Yet Hart believes the real pressure on the Italian will come from outside, not from the corridors of power at City.
"I think the club isn't heaping massive expectation on this season," Hart said. "I think they still believe that they've got the team and they've got the quality to challenge."
The transfer market tells its own story. City briefly broke the record fee for an English player to sign Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m, a huge outlay on a midfielder still proving himself at the very top level. At the same time, they look likely to lose Rodri, the World Cup Golden Ball winner and the heartbeat of their midfield, to Barcelona.
Maresca’s rebuild will not stop there. City are in talks with Lille over 18-year-old Morocco midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi in a deal worth £85.6m, and they still want Chelsea’s Argentina international Enzo Fernandez.
All of this unfolds against a shaky early marker: a 3-0 Community Shield defeat to Arsenal in Cardiff. One game, one trophy, but a sharp reminder that City are now the hunters again, not the hunted.
Hart does not sense panic inside the club.
"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.
"Externally, there's always going to be the noise. Maresca will come immediately under fire in terms of how people want to jump all over Man City if they do struggle.
"Internally, I think they're intelligent enough as a business to understand that what's going on right now is going to be difficult."
City have just watched their run of four straight titles from 2020-21 to 2023-24 end with two seasons of falling just short. The bar has not dropped. The margin for error has.
Arsenal’s new reality: from chasers to champions
For years, Arsenal were the story of the chase. Close, then closer, then finally over the line. Now they are in a position Hart knows all too well: everyone wants what they have.
He remembers how quickly the glow of a title can fade.
Recalling City’s triumphs in 2011-12 and 2013-14, he said: "I was walking on water at that time. I actually thought I was 'that guy'."
Then the comedown.
"And 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 phrase – "champion scrutiny" – is where Arsenal now live. Every wobble will be magnified, every dropped point treated as a crisis. The climb is romantic. The defence is ruthless.
"And it's really important how Arsenal are going to handle that," Hart said. "But Mikel Arteta has done a brilliant job, and he makes really big decisions and bold decisions. And it's about how you handle that first hurt. It's ironic that getting to the top is the easy thing, it really is."
Arteta has already shown he is not afraid of bold calls. Now he must prove his team can carry the crown without letting it weigh them down.
Chelsea and Xabi Alonso: time, space and a rare advantage
Across London, Chelsea come at the new season from a very different angle. No title to defend. No European football. No patience left among supporters.
Last season was miserable. Liam Rosenior, who replaced Enzo Maresca in the Stamford Bridge hotseat, lasted little more than three months. The club stumbled to 10th place, missing out on Europe for only the third time this century.
The last time that happened, in 2016-17, Antonio Conte turned the absence of midweek football into a weapon. Chelsea trained harder, drilled deeper, and stormed to the title.
Hart remembers the stories from inside that dressing room.
"I do remember Gary Cahill talking about Conte coming in to a Premier League team like Chelsea who [weren't] in Europe," he said. "He said they were so well drilled, he was so intense in what they needed. They almost had NFL playbooks and it allowed them the time to build into the season."
Xabi Alonso now inherits a similar calendar and, potentially, a similar edge. No trips abroad in midweek. No Thursday-Sunday grind. Just time on the training pitch with a squad that has underperformed its price tag.
"So that's a massive advantage for someone like Xabi Alonso, who's obviously got his way of playing and he'll have his time on the grass with his players," Hart said. "Their ceiling is, of course, to be in amongst it. I think it is. And they've got a really great opportunity."
Three clubs. Three managers at different stages of their Premier League lives. One season that will ask a simple question of all of them: who handles the heat best when the scrutiny bites?
