If there is now considerable doubt about Manchester City’s recent past and future, there can be no debate about their present quality. They showed they are the best team in England, and maybe Europe, by returning to the top of the Premier League.
A cavalier but callow Arsenal were shown what is really required to win one of these games and perhaps the title itself. City’s 3-1 win was a vintage champions’ victory in that sense, something that Pep Guardiola will make all the more of a virtue of given the controversy swirling around the club with those unprecedented Premier League charges.
