Eight goals at the Etihad, five of them City’s, and the number that should worry everyone is 4.25. That’s the expected-goals figure Sunderland generated on Saturday, from a newly promoted side that spent the afternoon carving open the league leaders in waiting. City are now top of the Premier League with the only perfect record, five wins from five, three points clear of Arsenal. They’re also the most entertaining team in the division and, by some distance, the most forgiving.
The stakes were handed to them a night early. Arsenal, who needed a comeback win over Chelsea just a week ago, were beaten 3-0 at Brighton on Friday, so City knew before kickoff that three points meant top spot for the first time this season.
A game that refused to settle
Enzo Fernández opened with a free-kick on nine minutes, his first goal for the club, and Brobbey answered three minutes later. Rayan Cherki restored the lead with the same calm he showed against Crystal Palace in August, then Brobbey levelled again before halftime. Antoine Semenyo scored either side of the break, Brobbey completed his hat-trick on 59 minutes, and Erling Haaland finally settled it on 81 after VAR confirmed he was onside.
That Haaland goal matters more than its place in the scoreline. It was his first against Sunderland, which completes the set: he has now scored against all 25 opponents he’s faced in the Premier League. It came from a Gvardiol overlap, a left-back making the run while everyone else watched.
Brobbey’s hat-trick in a losing cause is the first against City in the Premier League since 2007. Sunderland had never won at the Etihad in 11 previous league visits, and for long stretches they looked capable of ending that too.
What the match threads caught that the highlights didn’t
I spent Saturday evening in the post-match threads, and the mood among City fans was a strange blend of celebration and denial. The running joke was that they can’t defend, so they’ll simply score more. It’s funny until you check the fixture list and see Liverpool waiting after the break.
The numbers back the unease. Sunderland outshot City, put nine efforts on target, and two of their goals came from quick free-kicks that Maresca himself called too easy. Rúben Dias was bullied all afternoon and nearly turned one into his own net, Ballard hit the post late, and City conceding three at home was a first in roughly 18 months. This wasn’t bad luck, it was a high line getting picked apart by through-balls for 90 minutes.
Sunderland fans left with their heads high, and rightly so. The consensus was that this was the best side City have faced all season, a pressing team with Le Fee pulling strings behind Brobbey, a striker described in the threads as a menace and a unit, usually in the same sentence. Keep this up and they’re not relegation fodder, they’re the benchmark for every promoted side that follows.
Maresca, notably, wasn’t celebrating. He said he prefers 1-0 wins and complained there were too many goals, a remarkable thing for the manager of a team that just produced one of the games of the season. There’s a version of this where he’s learning to love the chaos, and a version where the chaos eventually costs him. I lean toward the second if nothing changes.
The break arrives at a strange time
Three weeks without a league game is either perfect or terrible timing, depending on which City team lives in your head. The optimist says Maresca gets a full block to fix the defensive structure before the trip to Anfield. The pessimist says momentum dies and a team that needed to face someone other than itself gets three weeks to overthink.
What’s not in dispute is the depth. Semenyo’s brace, Cherki’s composure, Fernández off the mark inside ten minutes, and Haaland barely needed to show up until the 81st. The club’s official match report framed it as a statement win, and in table terms it was. There’s also a quieter milestone: Maresca is now the sixth manager to win his first five Premier League games in charge of a new club, a list that includes Pep Guardiola. He’s matching Pep’s start while abandoning Pep’s control, and the table says it’s working.
My read is simple. This City team is genuinely excellent going forward and genuinely fragile at the back, and both things were true for 90 minutes on Saturday. A promoted side generating 4.25 expected goals at the Etihad isn’t a quirky stat, it’s a preview of what Liverpool will try the moment this break ends. Tighten the line without dulling the attack and City probably win the league. Don’t, and Brobbey’s hat-trick will be remembered as the first honest look at this team’s floor. Personally, I’d have traded two of those goals for a boring 3-1. So would Maresca, and that’s the part worth watching.
