Premier League 2023: Life After Pep Guardiola and the Title Challenges
The Premier League returns with three heavyweights walking into the unknown.
Manchester City without Pep Guardiola.
Chelsea under Xabi Alonso.
Arsenal trying to live like champions, not just play like them.
Joe Hart has lived this cycle before. Two titles with City, neither defended. Now, as a BBC Sport pundit, he’s watching a new era take shape and he doesn’t sound fooled by any early-season noise.
Life after Pep: Maresca steps into the storm
At Etihad Stadium, the Pep decade is over. Trophies, records, a defined identity – all handed over to Enzo Maresca, who inherits both a superclub and a question mark.
City have already flexed their financial muscle, briefly breaking the transfer record for an English player to land Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m. At the same time, they look likely to lose Rodri, Spain’s World Cup Golden Ball winner, to Barcelona. Talks are ongoing to bring in 18-year-old Morocco midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi from Lille for £85.6m, and the club still want Chelsea’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez.
Plenty of movement. Not much stability.
All this comes on the back of a flat 3-0 Community Shield defeat to Arsenal in Cardiff. The result itself won’t define Maresca, but it underlines how quickly the questions have started.
Hart, though, is convinced the real weight won’t come from inside the building.
“I think the club isn't heaping massive expectation on this season,” he said on 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.”
The heat, he says, will come from outside.
“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 dominated from 2020-21 to 2023-24 with four straight titles. Now, after falling just short in each of the past two seasons and losing Guardiola, they walk into a campaign that feels less like a procession and more like a test of their entire structure.
Arsenal step into the champion’s glare
Arsenal are about to find out what that test really feels like.
They hunted City down. They finally got over the line. Now comes the bit that undid Hart’s own City sides: staying there.
Recalling those title-winning seasons in 2011-12 and 2013-14, Hart admitted the comedown hit hard.
“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. 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 exactly what now wraps around Mikel Arteta’s squad. Every dip looks bigger. Every bad half feels like a crisis. Every rival raises their game.
“And it's really important how Arsenal are going to handle that,” Hart added. “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 chased. Now they have to endure. The title defence will not just test their football. It will test their nerve.
Chelsea, Alonso and a season with space to breathe
Across London, Chelsea arrive from a very different place.
Last season was miserable. Turbulent in the dugout, disjointed on the pitch. Liam Rosenior, brought in after Maresca’s short spell, lasted little more than three months. The final league position – 10th – means no European football at Stamford Bridge for just the third time this century.
That sounds bleak. It might actually be an opening.
The last time Chelsea were shut out of Europe, in 2016-17, Antonio Conte used the blank midweeks to drill his squad relentlessly and stormed to the title. Hart remembers hearing exactly how intense that work became.
“I do remember Gary Cahill talking about Conte coming in to a Premier League team like Chelsea who [weren't] in Europe,” Hart 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 walks into a similar landscape: a big club, no midweek distractions, time on the training pitch.
“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.”
No Europe. No excuse for chaos. Alonso has room to shape, teach and hard-wire his style into a young, expensively assembled squad. If he gets it right, Chelsea won’t just climb the table – they’ll crash back into the title conversation.
A City side trying to prove it can outlive its greatest manager.
An Arsenal team about to discover how heavy the crown really is.
A Chelsea project with time, space and a coach who thrives on structure.
The season isn’t just about who wins. It’s about who handles the storm best when the unraveling starts.
