The machine doesn’t blink. It doesn’t feel the humidity of a London afternoon, and it certainly doesn’t care about your narrative arcs. Manchester City’s 4-0 dismantling of Fulham at Craven Cottage wasn't a football match. It was a scheduled system update. Efficient. Cold. Entirely expected.
We’re told the Premier League is the greatest show on earth, a chaotic theater of dreams where anything can happen. That’s the marketing copy, anyway. The reality looks more like a high-end server farm. City just sits there, humming at a perfect frequency, processing data points until the opposition's firewall inevitably collapses. Fulham, to their credit, tried to stay online for the first twenty minutes. Then Josko Gvardiol happened.
Watching Gvardiol—a €90 million "defender" who currently functions as a lethal auxiliary winger—is like watching a company realize it has so much excess capital it might as well buy its competitors just to see what happens. He scored twice. The first was a clinical slice through the box that felt less like a goal and more like a targeted ad you can’t skip. The second was a tap-in at the back post that effectively ended the contest. By the time Julian Alvarez converted a late penalty, the Fulham fans were already checking their watches, wondering if the traffic on the District Line would be as congested as their own midfield.
This win puts City three points behind Arsenal with a game in hand. On paper, it’s a title race. In practice, it feels like waiting for a subscription to renew. You know it’s coming. You know the price. You just haven't seen the transaction hit your bank account yet.
Arsenal is the plucky startup in this scenario. They’ve got the charisma, the young CEO in Mikel Arteta, and a brand identity that people actually like. They play with a frantic, desperate energy that suggests they actually believe in things like "momentum" and "spirit." City doesn't believe in spirit. They believe in positioning. They believe in the 115 charges currently hanging over their heads like a software bug that the developers refuse to patch.
That’s the friction no one wants to talk about during the post-match montage. This level of dominance isn't just about Pep Guardiola’s genius or Kevin De Bruyne’s vision—though both are undeniably top-tier hardware. It’s about the sheer, unadulterated weight of state-backed financing. When you can spend £50 million on a backup midfielder who would be the best player at eighteen other clubs, you aren't playing the same game as everyone else. You’re playing a simulation with the "difficulty" slider turned all the way down.
The pundits will spend the week talking about "bottle" and "clutch genes." They’ll analyze the heat maps and the expected goals (xG). But the xG of this City team is essentially "Yes." Will they win? Yes. Will they make it look boring? Probably. Will they treat the final weeks of the season like a routine stress test of their own infrastructure? Absolutely.
Fulham’s players looked exhausted by the hour mark. Not because they weren't fit, but because chasing a ghost in a machine is draining. You move to close down Rodri, and the ball is already with Phil Foden. You track Foden, and Bernardo Silva has found a pocket of space that didn't exist three seconds ago. It’s an endless loop of optimization. It’s the "infinite scroll" of football. There is no natural stopping point, no moment of respite.
So, we head into the final stretch. Arsenal will likely win their remaining games, fueled by the terrifying realization that anything less than perfection is a failure. They are running on overclocked processors, fans whirring at maximum speed, praying the motherboard doesn't melt. Meanwhile, City is idling. They’re in low-power mode, comfortably strolling through West London, collecting three points like they’re picking up a grocery order.
The league table says there’s a gap. The math says there’s a chance. But anyone who has spent ten minutes watching how this team operates knows the truth. The title isn't being "won" in the traditional sense; it’s being archived.
How much do you have to spend on a soul before you realize the warranty doesn't cover losing?