Villarreal were just the latest in a long, long list of Erling Haaland’s victims, a 12th consecutive game clocked up with the Norwegian scoring. It was only one, which is not many for a man on 24 in his past 14 matches for club and country, but his early strike opened the way towards a win sufficiently dominant to suggest that a team is emerging once again. Pep Guardiola said: “We have the feeling that again we can control the games … that in many things you are coming back to what you were in the past.”
If Haaland is inevitable, he is not alone. Bernardo Silva added the second towards the end of a first half of notable superiority, before there were brief moments in which Manchester City allowed their hosts the illusion of making a game of this when it was gone.
