Tick. Tick. Tick. At the end of this breezy, fun, quietly feisty 2-1 defeat of Fulham, there was even a sense of super-smart design in Pep Guardiola’s onfield displays of affection.
There was a double-hug for John Stones: both hands around the torso plus a final flurry of buttock pats for the key defensive peg on the current eight-match winning league run. Guardiola hugged Jack Grealish, just because he loves hugging Jack Grealish.
With Erling Haaland, who was again sensationally good here, he lingered a little longer in the embrace, all the while rabbiting constantly in the forward’s ear, combining even here the sensual‑but‑fatherly man‑hug with fevered instructions about working the high press.
Is it meant to feel this easy? Even in the tough bits? City are now top of the league on points for the first time in this never‑ending season. Fulham gave them a good game, but not a horrible one. And at the end of that nine‑month run to the wire, the kind of title race where more mortal teams might expect to splutter just a little, the endgame feels closer to a high-end tasting menu, a series of delightful small plates, easily digested.
This was still an afternoon to showcase two key parts of the treble‑push from here. First, the obvious attacking strength (clue: he’s Norwegian and tall). And second, the one semi-theoretical weakness that comes hand in hand with Stones’s supremely well‑executed role in the current defensive set-up.
Zooming out, perhaps the most significant moment of the afternoon was Fulham’s first‑half goal, which came from a route City will always have to manage and mitigate, the football equivalent of that pesky unguarded Death Star ventilation shaft the Imperial architects always seem to lose in the planning stage.
Carlos Vinícius produced an excellent finish after a swift diagonal pass into City’s one avenue of uncertainty, the space next to the centre-backs when possession has just been turned over. This is a calculated risk. Previously City would leave space behind the full-backs because the game was all about creating attacking overloads on the flanks.
Now that space is vacated when one member of the back four steps into deep midfield. City still have three actual defenders plus Rodri to close this space. Stepping into midfield is a lot lower risk than tap‑dancing around the corner flag. But it is still a whisper of something. Real Madrid will no doubt be eagerly studying the Fulham blueprint (a sentence that is surely its own variation on the Google-whack).
Otherwise this was another fine win, and another day of Haaland stuff. Before kick‑off the players had lined up under lovely soft warm late April sky at Craven Cottage, London’s most bijou, period-features, Victorian terrace kind of ground.
These are the salad days of the Pep‑City era. Here is a City team drowning in honey, with 13 wins now in 14 games and 47 goals scored, purring through their mature stages of Total Coherence. If the project feels a little managed and political, a merkin for a dictatorship, the beauty of the team and the likable brilliance of the players still offers the most wonderfully distracting glaze.
The Fulham PA was at least hopeful before kick-off. “City without Kevin De Bruyne … so clearly a massive weakness for them.” Mmm. Shall we just see?
It took 1min 29sec for City to find their first foothold. The goal was made by Kyle Walker’s fine flat crossfield pass, by Grealish’s perfect catch on the run, and by Riyad Mahrez’s lovely touch and shimmy inside, a dip of the hips that took him straight into the planted foot of Tim Ream.
Haaland buried the penalty. It took him to 34 goals in the Premier League, a record‑equalling tally in the rebranded top tier. It has been an astonishingly fine and relentless goalscoring season – plus, as Pep has been keen to point out, one of linking, press and team-play, too. Haaland will be the obvious Ballon d’Or choice if City see off their next two Champions League opponents.
And Guardiola’s constant refinement has created something new, still devastating but with other gears too. With an hour gone Fulham had begun to press in small packs, creating that rarest of things, sustained pressure. Stones smashed a long clearance to ease the pressure. Haaland picked it up and just charged straight at four white shirts, dipping into that pure sprinter’s speed, acceleration that comes without any visible effort (Haaland is often portrayed as a kind of Iron Giant: but he is a genuine fast‑twitch athlete). Fulham muddled a corner out of it. City kept the ball for five minutes. How’s that pressure coming along?
Fulham had their moments. But with 35 minutes gone City were 2-1 up, Julián Álvarez the goalscorer with a piece of brilliance picked out of the air, a startling shot that rose and fell and dipped over the flailing hand of Bernd Leno. Ten games to win it all from here. That clock continues to tick down.
