Manchester City complete the domestic treble- FA Cup winners

Manchester City complete the domestic treble- FA Cup winners.

At the beginning of the Premier League season it must have seemed like mission impossible. Surely Manchester City couldn't do it all over again. But they did and when referee Kevin Friend blew the final whistle for the 2019 FA Cup Final, the hordes of light blue and white shirted City fans must have thought they were in some far away fantasy land where everything was just perfect and blissful.

You began to think back nostalgically to those days when City were deep in the basement of the old Third Division going nowhere. There was the famous play off Final at Wembley when City could only marginally squeeze past Gillingham at Wembley and then eventually gain promotion back to the Premier League. But now the decades have passed, the gloom lifted and everything they might have been hoping for has come true.

How long ago it seems since the now strolling minstrels of the Premier League were the laughing stock of English football, the veritable court jesters, those hilarious circus clowns who kept tripping over buckets of water and then just ended up in an embarrassed, crumpled heap on the floor. City were the obvious targets of satire and parody, the stand up comedy club circuit, Private Eye and Viz. You name it City were the authors of their own gag books and you couldn't help but laugh at the time.

But now City are done with the provincial theatres, done with all those exhausting miles on the road where the only thing they could  look forward to was a wet January night at Gillingham or a freezing mid week scrap at Bradford City. Of course they've suffered the horrendous embarrassments, the demeaning giggles at Grimsby and then the shamefaced absurdities that had to be experienced because nobody at the London Palladium that was the Premier League wanted to know them.

 The club who used to be top of the bill were now condemned to a cramped and claustrophobic dressing room with old bottles of booze in the corner and a couple of grotty handkerchiefs for good measure. Wind forward to the present day and the transformation is complete, the miserable old days are now well and truly behind them and yesterday Manchester City completed the most breathtaking of all achievements.

By beating a helpless and severely wounded Watford 6-0 in the FA Cup Final Manchester City have wrapped up a domestic treble of Carabao Cup aka the League Cup, the Premier League and now the FA Cup. They have booked their place in football's gleaming record books. City are now no mere flashes in the pan, transient visitors passing through, temporary guests, on lookers, nervous observers curious to know what was going on. City are now participants, the specially appointed ones, the ones who deserve the recognition because football may well have been deeply unkind to them in the past. And besides, who wants to be in the shadows when things get difficult? Certainly not City.

Yesterday Manchester City once again defied superlatives, proverbs, pronouns, adverbs, metaphors, similes, comparisons and parallels. You could resort quite freely to those familiar descriptions that may well have been used in any commentary of a City performance. But then you'd be forgiven for once again repeating them, highlighting them and then waxing lyrical about them. They are the words and sentences that seemed to fit so snugly in any reference to Manchester City.

Once again City's football seemed to enter a whole new dimension, an Olympian pinnacle of greatness, a supreme summit of excellence, the highest podium, the top table with the captain. Against Watford, City were just exceptional, angelic, pure, ethereal, extraordinary, the stateliest of them all, a force of nature and above all seemingly unbeatable.

There were one or two specific moments during the second half of the FA Cup Final when you thought you were witnessing the most glorious work of art. Surely a Constable or maybe even a Turner. It could have been a lovingly drawn landscape or a portrait, rich colours delicately dabbed onto a well positioned canvas, a lavish feast for the eyes.

And then there was that golden moment when City seemed to have written up a  binding contractual agreement before the game which stated that at no time should Watford ever touch the ball. In fact City seemed to have placed an embargo on City on Watford venturing over the half way, so resounding was Pep Guardiola's side dominance. Watford were forbidden from playing and that had to be the last word. City were a joy to behold, passing and passing and then passing the ball amongst themselves as if it were a parcel at a children's birthday party. It was hypnotic and bewildering but powerful and profound, a sheer perfection for which there was nothing else to say on the matter.

Manchester City are now a team of completeness, class and breeding, footballing pass masters, pioneers and radicals, a team designed by the most educated minds and deepest thinkers. Half way through the game, when the game was now completely lost for Watford,  City gratefully took  possession of the ball for what seemed to be the best part of fifteen minutes or so. Now they just tapped, flicked, flip flopped and joyfully protected the ball reminding you instantly of the kids in the school playground who, once they'd received the ball, would just hold on it, rushing back into their classrooms and hiding it discreetly in the science lab.

For this is what City were yesterday, souls of discretion, models of subtlety and diplomacy, cunning and refinement, wit and sensitivity. There was a beauty and diversity about City's game that we've now been privileged to watch for two seasons. Their football had a sleekness and sultry sensuality that most of us are now only well too accustomed to seeing. At first it looked as though City were just being experimental with the ball, testing it for future use before once again recycling it with short, snappy passes just for show. This would then be  followed by the sharply penetrative pass along the ground that left Watford all tied up and longing for the final whistle.

Before you could blink the City goals came like a torrential flood of rain. After dawdling and losing possession on the half way line, Watford were left high and dry. After the brilliant Raheem Sterling had had his shot briefly blocked, City went on the rampage. A ball floated precisely in the direction of the evergreen David Silva who pulled away and then drilled the ball past the Watford goalkeeper Gomes and into the back of the net. City now had the game in a vice like grip.

By the time the impeccable Vincent Kompany, Kyle Walker, Aymeric Laporte and Oleksander Zinchenko had locked up the gates for City at the back, Watford were facing another impenetrable light blue City wall. Not for the first time the excellent Bernardo Silva started overlapping on the wing for City and then broke open the yellow and black Hornets of Watford like a persistent bank robber. Silva had now become a leading contender for man of the match.

Silva was now wholly responsible for City's second when another exquisitely weighted ball found Gabriel Jesus whose careful shot was gleefully bundled into the net by Raheem Sterling. A two goal lead for City provided the most comfortable of cushions for the team in light blue. City's football had now assumed an altogether different type of shade and complexion. Their passing put you in the mind of a potter's wheel, clay gently manipulated and then presented for an admiring audience.

When the hugely gifted Kevin De Bruyne came on as a sub for City, Watford must have known what was about to follow. It is rather like being forewarned by the local council that one of those famous old industrial chimneys that had to be blown up. De Bruyne it was who sprinted through the centre of the Wembley pitch like a bolt of lightning and then, from another Bernardo Silva break, took the neatest of balls to drive the ball ferociously home for another City goal.

Now the game turned into a royal procession for City. With a Watford defence almost evaporating in front of them and now beyond redemption, |City pounced again and again. Gabriel Jesus seemed to almost glide past the charred ruins, powering home yet another City goal. This was not so much damage limitation for Watford more a case of stopping the rot. We were witnessing something very special, unique and historic and those devoted City supporters were not about to leave Wembley at any time.

Towards the end City were just looting and pillaging Watford's goal for more of the same again.  Bernardo Silva, not for the first time, just peeled open the soft and sopping layers of the Watford defence before stroking the ball easily to Raheem Sterling who, for personal reasons, took great delight in scoring another City goal. Sterling grew up near the distinctive arch of Wembley and in the light of all of those deplorable racist obscenities, Sterling would have privately revelled in his scoring pomp. When Sterling applied the finishing touch from another piece of De Bruyne magic for the sixth goal, the Cup was City's and a respectful hush fell over North London. The demolition job had been done.

For just a few fleeting minutes you remembered the two men who once so decorated the old Wembley stadium with their presence. There was Tony Book, that defensive rock from City's old FA Cup  winning side of 1969 accompanied by Watford's Luther Blissett who ended up on the wrong side of defeat when the Hornets were beaten by Howard Kendall's Everton in 1984.  Wembley always has a warm welcome for those who have trodden its lush green acres. If only Flanagan and Allen had been around to see those Wembley arches.