Melbourne City’s march to this year’s A-League premiers’ plate began in defeat. “You don’t want to feel like this again,” said coach Patrick Kisnorbo as City’s players licked their wounds after falling to Sydney FC in last year’s grand final. “You learn most through your darkest times.”

At that point Kisnorbo was assistant to Erick Mombaerts. Now he has the top job, and less than a year into it, with largely the same squad, his team are finally living up to the lofty expectations that come with City Football Group ownership – on Saturday, City secured their first premiers’ plate, thanks to a 1-0 win over Central Coast.

From the outside, previous failure to secure silverware was par for the course. City have long had a habit of flattering to deceive.

“In key games we probably did struggle,” says Michael Petrillo, City’s director of football. “We probably weren’t ready from a coaching perspective – the type of football we were playing. There was high turnover of players, there was no stability.

“I’ve been here six years and we’ve had five different coaches. That creates a lot of instability because every coach has his own ideas. It’s fair to say it didn’t work with Warren Joyce, we got that one wrong, but then Erick came in, implemented his style, and there was an automatic lift from the players… What we decided when Erick came in and Patrick took over was to create that stability.”

Kisnorbo had been earmarked for his current role since 2016 when he began transitioning from playing to coaching. Remaining within the CFG he has demonstrated a thirst for self-improvement, marvelling at Pep Guardiola’s intensity and learning first-hand from Patrick Vieira, refining his own philosophy along the way. Success arrived coaching City’s youth and W-League teams, and by the end of his year as assistant to Mombaerts he was ready.

“I owe them [CFG] everything in my coaching career,” Kisnorbo told Fox Sports. “They didn’t have to put their faith in a kid from Moonee Ponds after he finished his playing career, but they did.”

“I remember saying to Erick, ‘I want to give Patrick the job, what do you think?’ And he looked at me and unequivocally said: ‘absolutely, he’s the best appointment you can make’,” Petrillo says.

It was a decision endorsed by the playing group. “He is very vocal with the boys,” says Curtis Good, City’s most-used outfielder this campaign. “He wants us to work harder than any other team. He wants us to die for the guy next to us, to build that culture.”

A gruelling pre-season

“We want to play a certain game style, and that is in-your-face, high-pressing, winning the ball back as quickly as we can, moving constantly – and to do that for 90 minutes is difficult,” says Petrillo.

That game style originated with Mombaerts, the coach who aligned CFG’s Melbourne outpost with the Manchester masterplan. The players embraced it wholeheartedly. But following the 2020 grand final defeat they understood they needed to be better prepared. So they got to work.

Under the guidance of Andrew McKenzie, the club’s head of human performance, and Ralph Napoli, City’s head sport scientist, the players punished themselves throughout the long off-season. “We challenged the players mentally and physically, with the football,” Kisnorbo says. “We made them run certain drills, then be able to play under fatigue. Once they were fatigued, then we demanded quality. If they didn’t deliver, they ran again. I wanted the decision making to be right under pressure, and for them to go beyond how they were feeling physically.”

“It takes the whole squad to buy into it,” says Good. “There were times in pre-season when the boys were pushing themselves hard, right to their limits.”

Good recounts this with relish, clearly delighting in the realisation he was in a high-performing environment with player-led standards that took everyone out of their comfort zone in pursuit of success. Craig Noone and Scott Jamieson were singled out as senior pros setting an example, but it was the response of the younger generation, led by Connor Metcalfe and Nathaniel Atkinson, that drew the warmest praise.

City haven’t taken great strides this season on the back of a headline-making marquee, or a squad overhaul. Progress has come from a rising tide lifting all boats. “That’s why pre-season was so important,” adds Good.

All that work has led to three clear benefits. Firstly, City are better able to execute their game plan. As well as the intensity to win the ball back, there is more selfless running in possession to create space for others.

“When you play at the back and see it all in front of you, it’s unbelievable to see the workrate,” Good says. “Our No 10s, the third-man runs in behind Jamie Maclaren from Metcalfe, Florin Berenguer, and Adrian Luna, they’ll make those runs all day and maybe only once be rewarded for it.”

Secondly, City are bossing “red time”, the period towards the end of halves when fatigue is most pressing. This is in contrast to last season, and the upturn is no accident. It was recognised internally that there were passages in matches when the preferred approach was working, but those moments were not sustained for long enough. As Petrillo puts it, “now we’re able to keep the pressure on for longer periods, and eventually that grinds down most teams”.

Thirdly, City have been able to deliver consistently, carving efficiently through 2021. They’ve accommodated injuries and suspensions, losing only once since round seven, when everything came together on a Tuesday night at AAMI Park.

The turning point

City hosted Sydney in their seventh outing of the campaign, and it proved the most decisive fixture in the home-and-away season. They entered on the back of a three-match losing streak, a run contributing to four defeats in their opening six games. “They were probably a bit fatigued from pre-season,” admits Petrillo.

It was far from ideal preparation for a repeat of the grand final, but nobody panicked. “I knew if we went back to pre-season and followed the process, it would take care of itself,” Kisnorbo says, with the certainty of hindsight.

Sydney were blown off the park in the opening half before going 3-0 down after 53 minutes. City won 3-2 and haven’t looked back since. “Our GPS numbers from that game were incredible,” says Good. “When you overwhelm teams with that workrate, it’s hard to match it.” It is a performance still used internally as a benchmark for effort, a tangible reminder of why all those hours toiling in the summer heat on the windswept back pitches of Bundoora were worthwhile.

After exorcising their grand final demons City went on a run of six consecutive victories, scoring 20 goals in the process, including a streak of 13 unanswered. Famously, six of those were plundered against neighbours Melbourne Victory, a result somehow superseded just a month later. For the first time in its existence Melbourne’s second team bared its teeth.

As Good remembers, “at half-time in both matches there was a ‘foot on the throat’ mentality. It wasn’t even like ‘let’s just repeat, that was great boys’, it was ‘no, foot on the throat’.”

For Kisnorbo the results were the logical outcome of the hard work and dedication to improve that have driven the group all year. “My demands aren’t just for the derbies,” he says. “My demands are the same every day at training. It goes back to pre-season and getting the players to exceed what they think their level is, and getting them to play better than they can. It’s all about improving the player. If I was happy being ‘OK’, the challenge to the player doesn’t happen, so then they think ‘at this we stop’. No, we don’t stop. We’ve got to work and work and challenge every day for them to get better and the team to get better.”

A template for future success

If all goes to plan City will build on their maiden premiers’ plate with their first home grand final, but the playoffs will be far from straightforward with the club hit hard by the AFC World Cup qualification window. The run home will be used to workshop contingencies. “We’re confident we’ve got the depth,” Petrillo says.

While they may be forced to change key personnel, the principles that have guided City so far won’t be altered. “Our processes have worked well for us this season,” says Good. “Our philosophy has been that if we work hard and fight hard as a team then we’ll probably win, that doesn’t change.”

Failure to prevail in another big game no longer feels like it would provoke an existential crisis. Win or lose, the CFG project is approaching cruise control. After years of trial and error the men’s team is now operating close to the efficiency of their W-League counterparts and prolific academy system. They have secured qualification for consecutive Asian Champions Leagues, established squad stability, developed a defined playing style, and appointed a figurehead who has matured with, and understands, the organisation. This template need not change.

Much work remains off the field. Crowds are still poor, as is local cut through; Melbourne is not alive with City fever. But steps have been taken to address this with the partnership with what was Team 11 and the eventual relocation to the city’s south-east corridor. This should inform the club with a clearer sense of identity and hopefully the tribalism that comes with territorial pride. That process will not be harmed by a couple of pieces of silverware in the foyer.

But nobody is putting the cart before the horse, especially not Kisnorbo. Success for him is measured in how diligently the process has been followed, graft, and self-improvement; trophies are the external validation that emanate from a job well done.

“I’m happy with the way the players are playing due to the work we’ve done, since day one. Now you’re seeing things we’ve been working on for seven months,” he says before stressing, “it’s not my team, it’s our team. We all work together to improve and achieve together.”

Improvement is undeniable. Achievements are racking up. It has been a transformative season.