Four years ago Riyad Mahrez may have been excused mixed feelings when, at the end of his first season with Manchester City, they won the domestic treble. He had hardly been incidental to the fact but nor had he proved pivotal: form-wise it had been a mixed introduction to the relentless demands of Pep Guardiola’s football and he would admit, in hindsight, that settling in took time. You hardly needed to scour the internet’s darkest corners to find references to a £60m flop but his only crime was not being the finished article.
Now City are on course for a more glittering triple haul and this otherwise humdrum dismissal of a willing but drab Sheffield United was a reminder of how integral Mahrez has become to what City produce now. He has plugged in to a degree most outsiders failed to foresee; at 32 the flightier edges have been curbed while the gliding, floating guile that made him such a unique proposition in the first place has remained.
