Mateo Kovacic on Manchester City's Title Pressure

Mateo Kovacic knows exactly where the crosshairs are pointed this season – straight at Manchester City.

Two years without a Premier League title feels like a drought by City’s standards, and the Croatian midfielder did not try to dress it up when speaking to the South China Morning Post. The champions of four straight seasons have watched Liverpool and Arsenal take turns at the summit, and the mood inside the Etihad is clear: this cannot become a habit.

“I think the pressure is on everybody … on us especially, because we haven’t won it two years in a row,” Kovacic admitted, cutting through the usual pre-season platitudes. City are no longer the hunters. They are chasing again.

The landscape around them is shifting fast. Arsenal, twice the nearly men in recent title races, are pushing hard. Mikel Arteta has been open about it, describing his club as “very active [in our player search] trying to improve and evolve”. The message is obvious: the London club smell an opening and intend to drive through it.

Across the capital, Kovacic’s former side Chelsea are trying to crash that party as well. He knows the scale of their ambition better than most, having spent five years at Stamford Bridge before his move to City in 2023. This summer’s transfer window has only underlined it.

“Clubs are spending a lot. Chelsea’s one of them, and I think they added some great players,” he said. It was both an observation and a warning. City may still be the benchmark, but the pack is spending heavily to run them down.

The pressure, though, is not new to Kovacic. It comes with the badge.

“Big clubs are about winning, so you always feel the same pressure,” he said. That line could sit on the dressing-room wall at any elite club in Europe, but at City it carries extra weight. Winning is not a target there; it is the minimum requirement.

Complicating all of this is the looming shadow over the Etihad touchline. Pep Guardiola’s departure is on the horizon, and with it the end of an era that reshaped English football. Kovacic could not even guarantee he would be around for that first season after Guardiola, a reminder that the transition may be as ruthless as it is emotional.

City, then, enter the new campaign with a strange duality: the urgency of a team desperate to reclaim its throne, and the uncertainty of a club edging towards a post-Pep future. Rivals are arming themselves, money is flying, and the aura of invincibility has taken a couple of dents.

The title race will not wait for anyone.