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A moment of sheer brilliance in the 65th minute from Rayan Cherki had all at the Etihad Stadium sucking air in awe. The Frenchman burst along the right and cut back, then delivered a scintillating rabona plum on to the head of Phil Foden, who nodded home off the bar. Manchester City had cruised to a 3-0 lead and were heading for second, two points off the top, after Arsenal’s defeat at Aston Villa.
The manager will adore Cherki’s man-of-the-match display as much as there being no second-half defensive horror show to follow the one at Fulham, and you have to wonder if City will again break the hearts of the Gunners come May. If Cherki continues to play as he did here then he will join Foden and Erling Haaland as City’s gun attackers who will give them the best chance of yet another crown.
Draws with Liverpool and Arsenal and a 2-1 win at Chelsea were Sunderland’s credentials as they kicked off in sixth, before being schooled, their travails ending with Luke O’Nien’s added-time red card for chopping down Matheus Nunes.
Foden flitted about the pitch, firefly-style, demanding the ball, appearing in the Black Cats’ area for headers, on halfway, or in his own team’s third passing to Gianluigi Donnarumma for the goalkeeper to reset City’s buildup.
A Jérémy Doku ball played Foden in, but, from a tight angle on the left, the ball skipped across the goal and the chance was wasted. A loose Josko Gvardiol pass then allowed Sunderland to counter and Wilson Isidor to stamp into the area, but Rúben Dias’s positioning rescued City and the Croat.
Enjoying a possession share above 65%, City probed, yet at this stage the ball was going side to side or forward and back at the sluggish pace that infuriates the manager.
Régis Le Bris assembled his backline five-men strong and so, when City did finally score, Dias was cute to let fly from about 25 yards: the centre-back’s missile bent away (perhaps deflected) from Robin Roefs’s flailing left hand and City were ahead on 31 minutes. Before his strike at Newcastle in late November, the Portuguese had last scored in club colours in September 2022 (a 4-0 victory at Sevilla).
City were 2-0 up four minutes later. Foden dropped a corner from the right into the six-yard box and Gvardiol’s sweetly timed leap was matched by a bullet header that defeated Roefs.
Guardiola, ever the tactical tinkerer, intrigued via a switch that took Bernardo Silva infield from the right to join Foden and Cherki as a third playmaker, the trio often dizzying their visitors with interlinked carousel passing.
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After Tuesday’s shipping of three second-half goals at Craven Cottage (before hanging on for a 5-4 win), this was an exercise in achieving the polar opposite. Guardiola’s adherence to attack-first means, as he reiterated when explaining what went wrong in west London, that the ball is away from City territory, keeping the goal safe. The contest erupting in a pell-mell end-to-end phase will not have pleased him, then.
Doku dipped a shoulder and saw a curler smack the right post, then Roefs saved Foden’s follow-up, before the Englishman won a corner. Nothing came of this but moments later a dawdling Dias was mugged in City’s defensive third by Isidor, whose shot was beaten away by the outrushing Donnarumma. At the ensuing corner, from the left, Granit Xhaka’s effort pinged off the right post.
Next there was some bewitching Cherki footwork, deep in Sunderland’s area, the No 10 finding Erling Haaland, whose attempt was blocked on the line by Lutsharel Geertruida.
The contest was about to be decorated by Cherki’s assist for Foden’s third. This was an afternoon when you could see why Guardiola rates the Frenchman so highly.
