When Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City in 2008, the English Premier League was a relatively stable kingdom. Manchester United and the “Big Four” ruled it. For more than a decade, most of the same rules governed it. On the field, Arsne Wenger had disrupted it, but the pragmatism of Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho still reigned. Most games, by 2024 standards, were slow, choppy, defensive and staid.