No mistakes
Pep Guardiola couldn’t have been plainer when he mused about the derby defeat and explained what he expected his players to learn from it.
No individual mistakes, he warned.
Up stepped Aymeric Laporte to loop his arm around Jannik Vestergaard, to discover that even giant Danish pine trees can be blown down by a breeze, if they want to be. It was a penalty, Laporte’s mistake.
And just as City seemed to have secured the win at 4-1, Bernardo Silva’s sloppy pass, Laporte’s half-hearted challenge and a dozy Kyle Walker handed Saints a route back in.
Reality check
Pep Guardiola said after the derby defeat that he loves losing, as long as it’s not a loss that costs his team something.
Given that, and his assertion his squad had been “on fire” in training, we expected an inferno of a start from the Blues.
Instead, Southampton looked like handing out another dose of reality with a swift start of their own.
But once City had re-discovered their feet, and their rhythm, they soon established their own reality, the reality of a march towards a third league title in four years.
Aguero back
Everyone of a Blue persuasion wanted Kun to end the chatter about exactly how long it has been since his last goal.
And had it not been for the sodden Etihad turf holding up Aleks Zinchenko’s measured pass beyond the defence, he might have done just that.
City fans desperately want him to have a big couple of months – they are not ready to let him go just yet!
De Bruyne delivers
After a dreadful derby, some fans wanted the Belgian ace rested, but Guardiola decided to let him play his way back to form.
The energy was not 100 per cent, but the touch to tee up Mahrez’s opener, the drive to score his first, and the great feet for his second were all sure signs that it was the right policy
Ferna forever
Every game the Brazil midfielder plays until the end of the season will be scrutiny of his right to be given a new contract.
He found the opening phase highly uncomfortable but once City had shrugged off their hangover, he gave them control and tempo from deep in a way that no other City player can match.
