MANCHESTER CITY are an exceptional football team. They finished the Premier League season as deserved champions, and if things go as most people anticipate over the course of the next two weekends, they will finish the campaign as only the second English team to complete the treble.

They have played some thrilling attacking football over the course of the last nine months, and set standards that the rest of Europe looks incapable of matching.

They are also, however, serial winners who have now claimed the Premier League title in five of the last six seasons. Their latest success was hardly unexpected, given that it came after a summer that saw them add the best centre-forward in the world to a squad that was already incredibly strong. It should also be pointed out that City’s successes have to come with an asterisk attached given that the club has been charged by the Premier League with more than 100 breaches of the Financial Fair Play regulations.

Newcastle United have not won anything this season. Yet in the course of less than 18 months, they have been transformed from a club that was battling against relegation, with an unwanted return to the Championship hardly out of the question, to a team that is preparing to grace the Champions League stage again for the first time in two decades. They have been to Wembley for the first time in 20 years in the Carabao Cup final, and have achieved their transformation without the kind of radical financial shift that might have been anticipated when they were taken over by an ownership group backed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund.

That is why, while Pep Guardiola might be a superb boss, he should not have been crowned Manager of the Year earlier this week. Instead, that award should have gone to Eddie Howe.

Guardiola’s achievements at the Etihad Stadium clearly mark him out as a superb managerial talent, a status that was already well established thanks to his previous successes with Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

He played an integral role in City’s latest title triumph, with his tactical and man-management skills coming to the fore. Few would have foreseen John Stones excelling in a hybrid full-back/centre-midfield role prior to the start of the season, but Guardiola spotted an opportunity to dominate opposition midfields and exploited it brilliantly. He was firm and decisive in his handling of a potentially awkward situation with Joao Cancelo, forcing the full-back through the exit door the minute he had the potential to start unsettling the dressing room, and has successfully integrated Erling Haaland into a team that didn’t necessarily look like it would play to the striker’s strengths.

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That said, though, you could surely put Haaland into any team in the world and he would improve it, and for all that City could finish the current campaign as treble winners, I’d argue that Guardiola’s team has played better football in some of its previous incarnations. While Arsenal put up a decent fight, only to fade away meekly in the final month of the season, most of City’s likeliest rivals have underperformed badly this term, leaving the door open for the reigning champions to cruise to another title. For all that they might have trailed Arsenal for much of the first half of the season, it would have been a bigger surprise had City failed to reclaim their crown.

Newcastle, on the other hand, were certainly not being touted as realistic contenders for a top-four finish last August. They were still in the bottom half of the table at the start of October. Yet thanks to Howe’s inspirational and incisive management, they finished the campaign in fourth position, boasting the joint-best defensive record in the league and having developed a brand of thrilling attacking football that blew a series of teams away in the second half of the campaign.

Yes, the Magpies have spent money in the three transfer windows since Mike Ashley was ousted from St James’ Park. But one of the most remarkable aspects of Howe’s time on Tyneside is the way in which he has improved the vast majority of the players he inherited out of all recognition. Fabian Schar, Sean Longstaff, Joe Willock, Jacob Murphy, Joelinton and Miguel Almiron were all struggling under Steve Bruce, written off as players who would almost certainly spend their Premier League days battling in the bottom half of the table. All six have enjoyed sensational seasons under Howe, with the head coach also developing and improving the likes of Dan Burn, Sven Botman and Bruno Guimaraes, who arrived on his watch. Guardiola spends his time working with players who, almost without exception, are already the finished product.

Howe has also completely transformed Newcastle’s playing style, replacing the passive, almost defeatist approach that was adopted under Bruce with a high-intensity, high-pressing game that has enabled the Magpies to blitz opponents on a number of occasions this season. Brentford, West Ham, Everton, Tottenham – all were blown away by Howe’s tactics.

The Newcastle boss has successfully harnessed the power and emotion of the club’s support – something that a number of his predecessors failed to achieve – and has unified a club that was in danger of falling apart towards the end of the Ashley era. Again, for all that Guardiola has taken City forward, he was fortunate enough to inherit a club that was already at the very top of the pile.

Other managers have had excellent seasons – most notably Roberto de Zerbi, who has taken Brighton into Europe for the first time, and Gary O’Neil, who kept Bournemouth in the top-flight when pretty much everyone was writing them off – but no one can match Howe when it comes to exceeding expectations and improving every aspect of his team. Guardiola has the silverware, but Howe should have been Manager of the Year.