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Man City vs Brentford Live Reddit Score 28 May 2023
Already confirmed as champions, City are now solely focused on the upcoming FA Cup and Champions League finals, and Pep Guardiola will likely select a team with those ambitions in mind. Brentford look to do the double over Manchester City as they host the champions on the final day of the Premier League season. The Bees stunned City at the Etihad in November, the only time Pep Guardiola’s side have been beaten at home in any competition this season, and know they need all three points here to keep their slim European hopes alives. Should Aston Villa and Tottenham both lose and Brentford pick up a shock victory, it will be the Bees qualifying for the Europa Conference League next season.
For City, the focus is very much on the FA Cup and Champions League finals to come, though they will want to go into those having extended their unbeaten run, which now stands at 25 matches. It wasn’t plain-sailing, though – they were pushed by Liverpool every step of the way – and, to be frank, without a domestic cup and with the Champions League eluding them once again, given the precedent they have set in the past, there have been better seasons in recent years. There was a feeling that would change in 2022/23 if they signed the reliable out-and-out striker they had been without since the departure of Sergio Aguero to Barcelona a year earlier. As it turned out, paying £51 million to bring Erling Haaland to the Etihad from Borussia Dortmund has turned out to be one of the shrewdest pieces of business in football history.
The way the Norwegian has run amok, shattering records for fun, has, arguably been the story of the season. No player scored two Premier League hat-tricks quicker than him, nor three trebles. He is the only player in the history of the league to have scored hat-tricks in three successive home games and he has become the fastest to ever score 20 league goals. Earlier this month, he set a new benchmark for goals scored in a single Premier League season. There are simply not enough superlatives to describe City’s irrepressible no.9, who, somehow, does not even turn 23 until July.
Still, despite Haaland’s ridiculousness, Arsenal led the way for large periods of the season. October to February was punctuated by four defeats – one of which was, memorably, against Brentford – which kept Pep Guardiola’s men at arm’s length from the Gunners. After a 1-0 defeat at Tottenham on 5 February, Guardiola said: “We are not in the position to think about being champions, just the next game.” That match proved to be a turning point in City’s season. Since then, they have progressed to the FA Cup final without conceding a single goal, seen off RB Leipzig, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid on the way to the Champions League final and won 14 of their last 15 league games at the time of writing. It is easy to see why Jack Grealish said he and his team-mates felt “unstoppable” after a 4-0 second-leg win over reigning champions Real.
The last of those league wins came on 21 May, when a much-changed side beat Chelsea 1-0 one day after they secured a third-straight league title without kicking a ball, with floundering Arsenal’s hopes extinguished by a defeat to Nottingham Forest. “We have the feeling that we have done something exceptional in terms of the Premier League,” said Guardiola afterwards. “Of course, to be considered one of the greatest teams we have to win in Europe. We have to win the Champions League otherwise you will say it was not complete. It can be unfair that you need to win the Champions League to give credit and value to what you have done but we have to accept it.”
“It is more difficult to say than it might have been had the title been on the line because it would just be the strongest XI he has available, whereas now he has the opportunity to think about the FA Cup and the Champions League. “City have got to where they are by not taking their foot off the accelerator, but, at the same time, we have seen players like Phil Foden, Julian Alvarez and Riyad Mahrez come into the team and show what they can do as well. “I would expect it to be a strong team because City will want to end the season strongly, regardless of having already been crowned champions, so I would expect Haaland to play, but there could be some rotation behind him to keep everyone feeling valued.”
With the Premier League title already in the bag, Manchester City finish another triumphant season as English champions and they will end their campaign against Thomas Frank’s Brentford who have impressed themselves. With an eye on both the FA Cup final (against local rivals United) and the Champions League final (against Inter Milan) Pep Guardiola may well rest some of his star players for this one, so the like of Haaland, De Bruyne and Walker could miss out.
