Joe Hart on City’s New Era, Arsenal’s Title Defense, and Chelsea’s Challenge
Manchester City are entering a season they have spent a decade trying to avoid. No Pep Guardiola. No certainty. No aura of inevitability.
Into that vacuum walks Enzo Maresca, a coach with ideas, ambition and, as Joe Hart puts it, a storm of outside noise heading his way.
Maresca’s inheritance – and the noise around it
Guardiola’s exit after a glittering 10-year reign has left Maresca with more than just a high bar. He has a machine to keep running while key parts are being swapped out in real time.
City briefly smashed the British transfer record to land Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m, a bold move for a midfielder still proving himself at the very top level. At the same time, Rodri – Spain’s World Cup Golden Ball winner and the heartbeat of Guardiola’s midfield – looks likely to depart for Barcelona. Talks continue over an £85.6m move for 18-year-old Ayyoub Bouaddi from Lille, and the club still want Chelsea’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez.
It is a rebuild on the fly. And it has already taken a hit on the pitch: a flat 3-0 defeat by Arsenal in the Community Shield in Cardiff on Sunday.
Hart, who won two Premier League titles with City, believes the real pressure on Maresca won’t come from the boardroom.
“I think the club isn't heaping massive expectation on this season,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club. “I think they still believe that they've got the team and they've got the quality to challenge.
“I still feel they'll want to be pushing on all fronts. 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.”
So City, after four straight titles between 2020-21 and 2023-24 and then two years of falling just short, now have to find a new way to win while the rest of the league senses an opening.
Arsenal’s next test: staying on the summit
That opening has been seized by Arsenal. But Hart knows from experience that winning a title is only half the story.
He was in goal for City’s dramatic triumphs in 2011-12 and 2013-14. Neither crown was defended. The comedown, he remembers, is brutal.
“I was walking on water at that time. I actually thought I was ‘that guy’,” he said. “And football finds a way, really quickly, of showing you that you're not.”
The scrutiny changes once you are champions. Every wobble feels like a crisis, every dropped point a drama.
“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.
“And it's really important how Arsenal are going to handle that, 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.”
Arsenal have hunted City for years. Now they have to live like City did under Guardiola: the team everyone wants to knock off their perch, the side that plays every weekend with a target on its back.
Arteta’s response to that “first hurt” – the first bad run, the first wave of criticism as champions – will define whether this is a one-off peak or the start of an era.
New faces, old standards
While City reshape under Maresca and Arsenal brace for the grind of defending a title, Chelsea enter the season with a different kind of question: what will Xabi Alonso bring, and how quickly can he bring it?
The club’s recruitment drive continues to intersect directly with City’s plans, with Fernandez on City’s wish list. It is a reminder that the Premier League’s power axis is still being pulled and twisted by the same handful of clubs.
For Hart, the common thread is not just money or managers, but mentality. City’s decade under Guardiola set an almost impossible standard. Arsenal now know the view from the top. Chelsea want to climb back into that conversation.
Maresca must prove he can live with the noise. Arteta must prove he can live with the weight of being hunted. Alonso must prove he can shift a club that has lurched from one reset to another.
The questions are clear. The answers will come on the pitch.
