Pep Guardiola mark his 1,000th game as a manager,as Manchester City made their own collective landmark statement: they did not so much beat the champions Liverpool, they blew them away.
In doing so they fittingly marked Guardiola’s achievement with the style of football that typifies him. In time this will also go down as the Jeremy Doku game. In football parlance the winger was unplayable and capped it with a stunning goal which led to the City fans reverting to the “Poznan” celebration.
In terms of overall performance this will rank highly in that lengthy pantheon of Guardiola’s fantastic achievements. At times it was a match of unmatched attacking football.
Liverpool are eight points from the summit and at the end of a week when it looked like their form was returning, including an impressive Champions League victory over Real Madrid, they simply could not cope.
They have now lost five of their last six league games. Much more of this and their challenge will be over.
Liverpool may point to the controversy of Virgil van Dijk’s headed “goal” being ruled out for Andrew Robertson being offside – deemed to have impeded Gianluigi Donnarumma who would not have reached the ball anyway – when the score was 1-0 but, in truth, they can have no complaint.
There was almost another landmark, with Erling Haaland breaking the record by becoming the fastest to reach 100 Premier League goals but although he did score, with a thumping header after a mesmerising passing move, he had a penalty saved. For now he is on 99 goals.
Liverpool were far better in the second half – they frankly could not be much worse – and had chances with Mohamed Salah failing to take the best of them as he ran clear, only to flick the ball beyond the far post. It would have been no consolation.
