The good news for Chelsea as they approach Sunday’s Carabao Cup final with something between fear and dread is that it is only a couple of months since they became the first team in the country to beat Manchester City this season.

The bad news is those two months have shown City’s resilience while exposing Chelsea’s limitations under a new manager still struggling to work out how to bring the best from his players. That much was vividly demonstrated in the 6-0 humbling at the Etihad in the last game between the sides.

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Maurizio Sarri said at the time it would take at least a fortnight to get over that result and here we are two weeks later: the same opponent, a bigger stadium, more people watching.

After Chelsea were also comprehensively beaten on their own ground by Manchester United in the FA Cup, the score over the last two weeks alone is Manchester 8 London 0. At least Bernardo Silva was able to offer Chelsea a crumb of comfort. “The 6-0 win makes us confident but I think we should forget about it a little bit,” the City midfielder said. “Chelsea are still one of the best sides in the world, with players with the quality to destroy you.”

Perhaps the only other good news for a manager jeered by his own supporters in the most recent defeat is that after Sunday he can stop worrying about Mancunian opponents for a while. Sarri will have the visit of Tottenham to look forward to.

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While Chelsea’s season has concertinaed with surprising speed into a question of whether or not they will manage a top-four finish, City’s has turned into a continuing discussion about the possibility of winning all four trophies. “Almost impossible,” was Kevin De Bruyne’s verdict when the question came up in Germany in midweek and it could be argued that City’s defensive performance against Schalke will not have led many to disbelieve him. Yet City deserve some credit for taking each competition seriously, and the fact that the suggestion is even being made is an indication of how strenuously Pep Guardiola and his players have applied themselves since that shaky period around the turn of the year.

It is generally felt that to win the conventional treble of league, Champions League and domestic cup competition a team must either have an exceptional season or be a long way ahead of their rivals. City are on course for an even greater haul, though with four defeats already their league form has hardly been outstanding, and in terms of the title they are being matched and chased by two excellent teams in Liverpool and Spurs.

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While it is still far too early to suppose City might win everything in sight – the Champions League is surely their greatest challenge – if City are at Wembley facing a side they recently beat 6-0, then the first hurdle is not only in view but vaultable. With City being drawn against Championship opponents in the FA Cup quarter-finals, that competition could easily conform to a similar pattern. The league is in Liverpool’s hands but only if Jürgen Klopp’s team get a result in their game in hand on Sunday – no easy assumption since it is at Old Trafford. All that can be said is that since slipping up so unexpectedly at Newcastle a month ago City have recovered ground faultlessly, giving everyone – including the bookmakers – the impression that they might be better at holding their nerve in the run‑in. While Liverpool are entitled to disagree with that assessment, it is up to them to disprove it.

Certainly Chelsea are in no position to argue and, though cup finals always have the capacity to turn form on its head, Sunday’s presents an apparent imbalance between a side adhering successfully to a long-term plan and one displaying all the disadvantages of a lack of continuity. One wonders, for example, whether the Chelsea fans intend to boo Jorginho at Wembley, as they did against Malmö on Thursday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jorginho takes a tumble against Malmö – the Italian international was booed by the home crowd at Stamford Bridge. Photograph: Romena Fogliati/Offside/Getty Images

One does not wonder whether Sarri intends to alter his lineup and play N’Golo Kanté in his best position, because a manager who has been resisting such a change all season is probably not going to run with it in a cup final. Sarri recently explained that he is trying to operate a different system from the one that saw Kanté win a title with Chelsea, or the one that saw the France player win the World Cup, a system that requires the most defensive midfielder to be adept at passing the ball forward quickly.

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of that argument, suffice to say that Chelsea cannot have imagined that the manager they brought in from Napoli would find fault with a player who had spent the previous three years giving almost universal satisfaction to Claudio Ranieri, Antonio Conte and Didier Deschamps.

Yet that is always going to be a danger with an eighth manager in 10 years. City went to a lot of trouble and paid a high price for their Barcelona-inspired continuity but, now the different components are all in place, the result is a reliable simplicity.