Business as usual for Manchester City. Or should that be business as unusual? City may be in a strange kind of limbo but their new normal looked distinctly similar to the old variant. They won. Whatever punishments may await in the wake of the 114 guilty verdicts, which City are appealing, for now they are constructing a title challenge which, perhaps, the Premier League could do without. They are leaders with a six-point advantage at the summit and, some would say, an asterisk or two.
But Enzo Maresca’s stellar start has given him outright possession of a record. The Italian has seven victories out of seven in the top flight, the longest winning start to a reign in the Premier League. Beating Ipswich took him past Carlo Ancelotti, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and his predecessor Pep Guardiola, all tied on six. “For sure I didn’t expect to win seven games out of seven,” said Maresca. “It’s a matter of winning games in this business.” It has been at City, anyway.
