It was as sweet a strike as you could wish to see, but Pep Guardiola was not interested in celebrating the Riyad Mahrez free kick that began this rout.
He was calling 20-year-old Cole Palmer over and giving him an animated in-game tutorial that included a ticking-off for not plating up a golden chance for Julian Alvarez. Pep keeps taking perfectionism to new levels.
This was not just about Manchester City swaggering into the FA Cup fourth round, this was about Manchester City reminding football that Guardiola has assembled and shaped a squad that is as formidable as any the English game has seen.
This was about the sheer quality of the players who have to accept that rotation is at the top of their job description. This was about Mahrez, whose set-piece breakthrough midway through the first half was a thing of curling beauty from 25 yards.
This was about Alvarez, whose penalty conversion - after a Kai Havertz handball - was hardly emphatic but whose overall contribution was tirelessly valuable. This was about Phil Foden, whose left-footed, cushioned finish after some stellar work from Kyle Walker was executed with familiar class not long before half-time.
Foden? Rotation? Absolutely. Despite his dazzling talent, it is clear Guardiola brackets Foden in that large group of players who, on a game by game basis, can be dispensable - and that is a frightening scenario.
On this occasion, Guardiola’s side were helped by an opposition that, at best, looked unorganised and, at worst, looked uninterested. But that Foden goal - City’s third - was a monument to their manager’s coaching excellence.
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The passes from Palmer and Rodri, the wait and short ball from Mahrez, the run and assist from Walker, the finessed finale from Foden, different class. But what made this dominant performance more impressive was that it was, essentially, a scratch City team.
You don’t need to dig out the record books to confidently declare the starting XI had never previously played as one ensemble, yet, after feeling their way into proceedings over the first 10 minutes, they operated with a fluency that Graham Potter’s team could never get close to matching.
It helped that one or two linchpins were still in place, particularly Rodri, who simply dominated the midfield area with that routine majesty of his. With the game long since secure, Guardiola called Rodri for a rest just before the hour mark but that hardly lessened City’s superiority, even if their urgency had diminished.
With changes, Chelsea improved - it would have been nigh on impossible not to - but there was still an inevitability about a City fourth and it duly arrived when Kalidou Koulibaly crowned a truly forgettable individual contribution by bundling over Foden, who had been set free by a nutmegging pass from Bernardo Silva.
Mahrez assumed duties from 12 yards and completed them in more ferocious fashion than Alvarez had. In the summer of 2020, Koulibaly was certain that he would be moving to the Etihad, but a huge asking price made City turn instead to Ruben Dias.
On this evidence from the Chelsea man, it was obviously the right move, but Guardiola would probably have made Koulibaly work out. Because Pep the perfectionist, as was shown here, is the coach who gets the best out of most people.
