After the last few years of wonderful success under manager Pep Guardiola, it is not unfair at all to say that few in the wider world of football saw Manchester City's fall from grace coming this year.
As fans, commentators and pundits have all scoured over the varying, and many, possible explanations for how it all went wrong this year, the numerous reasons given are that Financial Fair Play issues just proved to ultimately be too big a distraction, we have injuries and an aging squad and after all the success natural complacency has slipped in, allied to players losing 5% and their former spark, and then we have some very expensive transfers of players who in some cases have just lot lived up to their billing.
With a host of other talking points for our semi demise, we all know nothing lasts forever but with Guardiola committing his future a few months back despite all the background speculation, it does mean that we are set for a busy and quite an intriguing summer and for those fans who like a flutter and use sites like https://irelandbettingsites.ie there are going to be a plethora of odds and options available come the summer.
There is no denying that we have never seen the best of Jack Grealish, but there is also no denying that he has played his part and played the role the gaffer wanted from him and under Guardiola we have not had many absolute failures on a transfer front, but Kalvin Phillips certainly falls into that bracket.
Including the injuries, we all know that we have missed some incredible talents this season, and Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Rodri are three of the bigger names that have spent time on the sidelines, but they are far from alone, and as fans will know, we have been significantly hit on a defensive front which has carried ramifications of its own across the months.
Whilst players have returned, sadly, some have just not returned at the performance levels and influence levels that we have come to expect from them, and this is where our more recent transfer strategy has left us short.
Who out of the current crop of first teamers are ever truly going to be talked about as being genuinely true legends in a decades time? Spoken of in the same breath for the service they gave as the likes of KDB, Vincent Kompany, David Silva or Serio Aguero? Not just their service either, their pure value for money over successive campaigns.
John Stones, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, Phil Foden, Erling Haaland maybe....the homegrown lads like Rico Lewis and Oscar Bobb possibly in the years to come.
But a squad notorious for having modern day legends, is now very short on that number and we are also now significantly lacking in on pitch leadership and too many players are going through the motions, until it goes wrong and arguably we are then lucky to even get 'going through the motions'.
A case in point there would be the recent defeat to Nottingham Forest, and that has been all too common this campaign.
So a full rebuild, who stays, who goes and who becomes the next legend in the marking and with the battle for the Champions League spots looking likely to go down to the wire, will we complicate our rebuild by missing out on those revenues.