Joe Hart on Premier League Challenges: City, Arsenal, and the Pressure to Perform
Joe Hart has lived this before. The parades, the medals, the sense you’ve cracked football – and then the brutal realisation that staying on top is far harder than getting there in the first place.
So when he looks at a Premier League season shaped by three huge questions – Manchester City without Pep Guardiola, Xabi Alonso at Chelsea, and Arsenal as defending champions – he doesn’t talk in hypotheticals. He talks from scars.
Maresca’s City: A giant steps aside
Guardiola’s departure after a decade of relentless winning leaves Enzo Maresca walking into one of the toughest jobs in modern football. City have the trophies, the structure, the squad. What they don’t have any more is the man who defined an era.
Hart, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live's Monday Night Club, doesn’t sense panic inside the Etihad.
“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.”
The pressure, he insists, will come from outside.
“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 summer only adds to the intrigue. They briefly broke the transfer record for an English player by landing Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m, a bold move for a midfielder still proving himself at the very top level.
At the same time, the core of Guardiola’s side is shifting. Spain’s World Cup Golden Ball winner Rodri looks likely to leave for Barcelona. Talks are under way for 18-year-old Morocco midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi from Lille in a deal worth £85.6m. The club still want Chelsea’s Argentina international Enzo Fernandez.
It’s a rebuild on the move. And it’s happening off the back of a 3-0 defeat to Arsenal in the Community Shield in Cardiff – a scoreline that will feed every early-season narrative about life after Pep.
“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, won’t be so forgiving if City stumble.
Arsenal’s new reality: hunted, not hunters
For four straight seasons from 2020-21 to 2023-24, City turned the Premier League title race into a habit. Then, in the last two campaigns, they fell just short. Arsenal finally broke through – and in doing so, walked into a completely different kind of storm.
Hart knows that shift better than most. He won the league with City in 2011-12 and 2013-14. Neither title was defended.
“I was walking on water at that time,” he admitted. “I actually thought I was 'that guy’.”
Then came the comedown.
“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 world Arsenal are stepping into now. Every dropped point feels bigger. Every wobble becomes a crisis. Every rival raises their game.
“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.”
The irony, as Hart sees it, cuts deep.
“It's ironic that getting to the top is the easy thing, it really is.”
Arsenal have discovered the summit. City are trying to stay there without the man who built their dynasty. Chelsea are betting on Xabi Alonso to drag them back into the conversation.
The questions are clear. The answers will be ruthless.
