This was perhaps the perfect way to win it, the perfect way to confirm Manchester City’s status as the defining domestic force of the age and all-round era-machine.
The words used to describe this team, the semantic field of Pep-era City, tend to be mechanical. City are a juggernaut, a steamroller, a fully operational death star. They completed the league and Cup Double here with a couple of moments of routine, mid-30s brilliance from a footballer who looks less like a visitor from the footballing future, more like a cuddly pirate.
