Preamble: When Rafael Benitez left English football in June 2010, grown men were trying not to weep at Toy Story 3, Britain was a couple of weeks into its rule by The Coalition (who, when given initial capitals, sound like a early 1990s mid-card WWF tag team), and the world's ears were still a fortnight away from assault by Miley Cyrus's seminal third LP, Can't Be Tamed, a four-hour concept album following the story of a free-roaming robotic lion captured by an evil circus (possibly). The Spanish One returns to these shores 29 months later with fashionable youngsters wearing their trousers rolled up and pointy footwear of the sort made by the title characters in The Elves and the Shoemaker. For some reason it feels that we haven't moved on all that much. The football landscape hasn't really changed much either. In 2009-10 Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham finishes secon, third and fourth, Chelsea, who won the FA Cup, and Manchester City were in the top six and the two Merseyside clubs were seventh and eighth. In 2011-12 all those things were true once more. Sunrise, sunset. And Benítez's job at Stamford Bridge is a fairly straightforward one - get Chelsea into the Champions League, get Fernando Torres to score a goal or two, ignore the weird hysterical reaction to his temporary appointment and, most importantly, carve out a buttock groove in the Chelsea hotseat that will fit Pep Guardiola's shapely derriere next summer. The Blues are in with a shout in the title race, too, but you get the sense that Roman Abramovich is prepared to let it slide for this season and settle for third, which is still Chelsea's most likely spot come May. That won't do for City, though. With Chelsea doing their own thing, Arsenal and Spurs well off the pace and Manchester United looking flakier than puff pastry left in the Mojave, the title really should be City's for the taking. The question of whether, with the money at their disposal, it should be theirs for the taking whenever they want it anyway is, for now at least, besides the point. They've been unimpressive but unbeaten in the league thus far (and just unimpressive in Europe) but there were signs of something stirring against Villa last weekend. All in all, this is one to relish.