Defending champions Manchester City will be hoping to defend their title when they face newly-promoted Burnley on Friday as the English Premier League returns for the 2023/2024 season.
The match will see City’s coach Pep Guardiola square off against his former-player-now-coach Vincent Kompany who is gradually becoming one of the top young coaches around.
The Belgian international spearheaded a great turnaround of fortunes for the Clarets as they finished winners of the Championship. If anything, it is that this side is capable of bursting Man City bubbles after Arsenal seemed to have lent all clubs a formula to defeat City following their latest Community Shield triumph.
With a match against the EPL champions, Burnley will stand to gain a lot.
“I would play every week of every month of every year against a team the level of Man City,” said Kompany.
“That is the best way to improve. You won’t get them all right, it’s impossible with the quality of that team – possibly the best team at the moment in world football – but that’s the best challenge so I wouldn’t want it any different.”
Things seem a little tough at Manchester City right now. They lost Ilkay Gundogan and Riyadh Mahrez to Barcelona and Al-Ahli respectively and have only managed to grab the services of Josko Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic.
In fact, Guardiola affirmed that the team might not be able to achieve what they did last campaign.
“It feels like it finished yesterday but we start again. I don’t think it will be possible to do what we did last season, it’s once in a lifetime. I said to the players forget about it.”
He added, “We climbed the highest mountain last season but we have come down that mountain now. We start from the same as everyone else, with the same intention and there will be a lot of difficulties to climb the mountain again.”
They still pose the threats, anyways, given that they still have the footballing genius cast of De Bruyne, Alvarez, Haaland and Bernando, whom they managed to pin to the squad, at their disposal.
Predicted line-up
Burnley – Trafford; Roberts, Beyer, O’Shea, Vitinho; Cork, Cullen; Redmond, Brownhill, Zaroury, Rodriguez
Manchester City – Ederson, Dias, Akanji, Walker, Stones, Rodri, De Bruyne, Bernando, Grealish, Kovacic, Haaland.
Predicted scoreline
It might seem a bit difficult for Manchester City given Burnley’s hunger for pride and conviction. However, City might walk away as winner.
Final scores: Burnley 1 Manchester City 2
