MANCHESTER, England — The Premier League would be different. Everyone said so.

Pep Guardiola might have arrived in England in the summer of 2016 with three Spanish and three German titles to his name, but those honors seemed to come with an asterisk.

He had always managed heavy favorites: Barcelona and Bayern Munich. He had triumphed only in leagues that looked like one- or two-horse races. Barcelona has just one serious, consistent rival: Real Madrid. Bayern does not even have that.

Trying to succeed at Manchester City would be an altogether more challenging proposition, he was told. England could offer five other clubs that would regard themselves as genuine contenders for the championship, with the money and the ambition and the clout to stand up to Guardiola and to City. There would be no plain sailing in the professed most competitive league in the world.

His predecessors, like Roberto Mancini, knew it: “As coach of Barcelona, he had Messi, Iniesta, a phenomenal team. Then he went to Germany, where Bayern always wins, and therefore he did not have a difficult life.”