Bournemouth certainly deserve credit for coming to the Etihad to play football instead of putting eleven men behind the ball, but they became yet another victim of the immovable object that Pep Guardiola has already built as Manchester City manager.
Suggestions that the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss would be in for a rude awakening in the Premier League have been well and truly quashed, with Saturday’s 4-0 win not only making it fifteen goals in just five games, but also continued our 100% start to the season as our flying start continues.
Betway certainly appear to be vindicated in their decision to install City as the title favourites before a ball had been kicked in anger, but it is worth noting that we were in the same position last year before things began to unravel.
It is easy to see similarities between the two starts, with some pundits practically engraving City’s name on the title after winning their opening five league games last year. Kelechi Iheanacho’s last-gasp winner at Selhurst Park against Crystal Palace sealed a run that saw City score eleven goals and keep five straight clean sheets – evidence that the team were firing on all cylinders at both ends of the pitch under Manuel Pellegrini.
However, back-to-back defeats against West Ham and Tottenham ultimately ended any notion of City going the entire season unbeaten and, although the team rallied to win three and draw two of their next five games, it signalled the beginning of our demise.
A number of key injuries, particularly to talismanic leader Vincent Kompany who missed the majority of the campaign, and a severe lack of consistency ultimately dented any chance that City had of competing for the title. From such a bright start, we not only finished fifteen points behind surprise champions Leicester, but also held onto fourth spot by the skin of out teeth on goal difference ahead of our city rivals – scant consolation perhaps, but it goes to show that getting off to a blistering start can count for nothing if it is not followed up with high quality, consistent performances.
You get the feeling that things will be much different this time around, with Guardiola not the sort of manager who will tolerate lapses in focus and effort on the training ground, let alone a match day. Being a perfectionist at heart, he will feel there is still work to be done in defence, with the Bournemouth game being the only time that City have kept a clean sheet.
However, stating that his team must improve significantly if we are to challenge for the Premier League and Champions League trophies is pretty ominous; the quality of football, particularly going forward, has been nothing short of superb, and if Guardiola believes there is still another gear or two to go into, then we can only look forward to even more impressive performance.
It should be noted that not only has Kompany been absent for all five games, but also Sergio Aguero has missed the last two through suspension. The first of those games was the Manchester derby, and while the pessimists among us may have been waiting to see the derby odds at Betway to see whether the bookmakers were backing City without their star striker, we ultimately blew United away with a devastating 60-minute spell in which the likes of David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne were head and shoulders above anyone else on the pitch.
The latter, in particularly, has already become an integral part of the team under Guardiola through a number of superb performances which have belied his relative youth, with the Belgian star arguably the best player in the Premier League right now.
Guardiola has made a number of transformations on and off the pitch, with even subtle details such as training times and eating together as a team all part of his philosophy that has proved hugely successful over the years.
It is way too soon to start believing that Manchester City will stay the distance at the top, particularly after what happened last season which proved that literally anything is possible in football, but there has been more than enough quality in the first five performances to suggest that we could be the team to stop.
