Joe Hart on Premier League Dynamics After Guardiola
The Premier League is about to open without Pep Guardiola on the touchline for the first time in a decade – and the ripples from his exit are already shaping the season’s biggest storylines.
On BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club, former Manchester City and England goalkeeper Joe Hart cut straight to the point: Enzo Maresca has inherited a giant, but not yet a crisis.
Maresca’s inheritance at City
Guardiola walks away from the Etihad after a decade of trophies and total control. Maresca walks into a dressing room that still expects to win – but, Hart insists, not one that is being crushed by internal demands.
"I think the club isn't heaping massive expectation on this season," Hart said. "I think they still believe that they've got the team and they've got the quality to challenge."
City’s summer has been anything but quiet. They briefly broke the transfer record for an English player to land Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m, a huge fee for a midfielder still to prove himself at the very top. At the same time, the core of Guardiola’s side is shifting.
Rodri, the World Cup Golden Ball winner and the metronome of City’s midfield, looks likely to join Barcelona. Talks are ongoing for Lille’s 18-year-old Morocco midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi in an £85.6m move, a deal that underlines City’s willingness to bet big on the future. They still want Chelsea’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez as well, a sign that Maresca’s rebuild will be bold rather than cautious.
All of this plays out against a bruising early marker: a 3-0 Community Shield defeat to Arsenal in Cardiff. Not a trophy that defines a season, but a scoreline that sharpens the questions.
Hart, who won two league titles with City, believes the real heat on Maresca will come from outside the club walls.
"Externally, there's always going to be the noise," he said. "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, who rattled off four straight titles from 2020-21 to 2023-24, have fallen just short in the last two campaigns. The aura of inevitability has thinned, but the expectation hasn’t disappeared. Hart is convinced the club hierarchy recognises that a post-Pep transition cannot be judged in the same way as the peak-Guardiola years.
"I still feel they'll want to be pushing on all fronts," he said. "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 outside world, though, will not be so patient.
Arsenal step into the champion’s storm
While City adjust to life after Pep, Arsenal are dealing with a different kind of challenge: staying on top.
Hart knows that landscape better than most. He lived it at City, winning titles in 2011-12 and 2013-14 – and failing to defend both.
"I was walking on water at that time," he admitted. "I actually thought I was 'that guy'."
Then reality hit.
"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 is the storm now heading Arsenal’s way. It is one thing to hunt City down. It is another to carry the target on your back from August to May.
"And it's really important how Arsenal are going to handle that," Hart said. "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."
Arteta’s side have already dished out a little hurt of their own with that 3-0 win over City in Cardiff. It was symbolic more than decisive, but it underlined that Arsenal are no longer the plucky chasers; they are the team everyone else wants to knock off the summit.
Hart’s verdict on the psychology of it all is blunt.
"It's ironic that getting to the top is the easy thing, it really is."
Alonso, Chelsea and the next wave
While Hart’s main focus lay on his former club and the champions, another storyline hums in the background: Xabi Alonso’s arrival at Chelsea and what that means for a club still trying to reassemble itself into a coherent force.
Chelsea’s role in this summer’s web is already clear through Enzo Fernandez, a player City still want to prise away from Stamford Bridge. If Alonso can stabilise and elevate Chelsea while fending off that kind of interest, he shifts the power balance again.
City resetting under Maresca. Arsenal bracing for the weight of being champions. Chelsea gambling on Alonso’s ability to impose order and identity.
The Premier League has lost Pep Guardiola from the technical area, but it has not lost its edge. The question now is simple: who handles the new pressure best when the first cracks appear?
