Joe Hart on Premier League Challenges: City, Arsenal, and Chelsea

Joe Hart knows what it feels like when the music stops.

He was in goal as Manchester City climbed to the summit under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini, lifting titles in 2011-12 and 2013-14, only to discover how unforgiving the season after can be. That experience colours how he looks at a Premier League campaign that starts with three huge questions: life after Pep Guardiola at City, Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea experiment and Arsenal’s attempt to defend a crown that once seemed beyond them.

Maresca walks into the storm

At Etihad Stadium, the Guardiola era is over. Ten years of trophies, records and control have handed Enzo Maresca a job that feels almost impossible to follow.

The Italian has barely unpacked and already the noise is deafening. A 3-0 defeat by Arsenal in the Community Shield in Cardiff on Sunday was a jolt, not a crisis, but it sharpened the focus on what comes next.

Hart, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club, is convinced the real strain on Maresca will not come from inside the building.

“I think the club isn't heaping massive expectation on this season,” he said. “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 pressure, he says, will come from everywhere else.

“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’s hierarchy have at least armed their new manager in the market. They briefly broke the transfer record for an English player to sign Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m, a huge fee for a midfielder still to prove himself at the very top level.

At the same time, the core of Guardiola’s midfield may be ripped out. Spain’s World Cup Golden Ball winner Rodri looks likely to leave for Barcelona, a potential departure that would change the entire feel of City’s engine room. Talks are ongoing for Morocco’s 18-year-old Ayyoub Bouaddi from Lille in an £85.6m move, a signing that would underline the club’s willingness to bet big on youth.

They also still want Chelsea’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez. Another major piece, another sign that City intend to stay aggressive, even in transition.

The squad remains stacked. The standard, though, has shifted. After winning four titles in a row from 2020-21 to 2023-24, City have fallen just short in each of the past two seasons. For the first time in years, they enter a campaign not as the inevitable champions, but as one of several contenders.

Arsenal discover the hard part

Hart has lived the comedown Arsenal are about to face.

Recalling those two City titles that he and his team-mates failed to defend, he admitted: “I was walking on water at that time. I actually thought I was 'that guy'.”

“And football finds a way, really quickly, of showing you that you're not.”

Winning is intoxicating. Defending is suffocating. Every mistake feels bigger, every wobble a crisis.

“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,” Hart said.

That is the reality now for Mikel Arteta’s side. They hunted City for years. Now they are the ones with the target on their backs, the team every opponent wants to bloody.

Hart believes how Arsenal deal with that shift will define their year.

“And it's really important how Arsenal are going to handle that, 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.”

Arteta has already shown he is willing to be ruthless and inventive. He will need both traits again as the scrutiny tightens and the margins shrink.

Maresca, meanwhile, must try to keep City in the fight while reshaping a side that has known only one voice for a decade. Arsenal must prove they are not a one-season story. Chelsea, under Alonso, are desperate to rejoin the conversation.

The champions’ crown is on Arsenal’s heads. The weight of a dynasty sits on Maresca’s shoulders. The new season will reveal who can carry it longest.