Man City 5-3 Sunderland: Brobbey hat-trick in vain as Maresca makes history

Manchester City will spend the international break at the summit of the Premier League, three points clear, after an afternoon of glorious chaos at the Etihad in which Sunderland scored three times and still trudged away beaten.

The champions’ unbeaten start was dismantled on the south coast on Saturday, Arsenal going down 3-0 at Brighton. City needed no second invitation on Sunday, and Enzo Maresca’s players answered emphatically with a 5-3 victory that stretched their winning run in all competitions to seven matches.

A weekend that swung City’s way

There is no longer a single club in England’s top four divisions still carrying a 100% league record — and the one that was left standing when the dust settled is the one wearing sky blue.

Maresca has now won each of his first five top-flight fixtures since succeeding Pep Guardiola in the summer, a feat managed previously by only five men: Carlo Ancelotti, Craig Shakespeare, Maurizio Sarri, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and, as it happens, the very predecessor he was hired to follow. For a manager whose honeymoon ended before it began with a Community Shield humbling at the hands of Mikel Arteta’s side in August, the turnaround has been startling.

He was not entirely satisfied, mind you. Maresca admitted he would happily swap a five-goal spectacle for a scruffy single-goal win, and he picked holes in two of the three goals his team shipped, pointing to swift free-kicks — Granit Xhaka’s quick restart among them — that caught his defenders napping.

Brobbey torments City and still loses

Brian Brobbey gave Ruben Dias the sort of ordeal that lingers in a captain’s memory. The Sunderland forward helped himself to a hat-trick and became only the sixth player to manage that feat in a Premier League game his team went on to lose.

Regis Le Bris’s side deserved more than the scoreline suggests. Their expected goals tally of 4.25 was the highest ever posted by a visiting team at the Etihad in the competition — a figure that will make uncomfortable reading for Maresca, whose side had conceded just twice in their opening four league matches before Sunday.

Up the other end, City were irresistible in patches. Antoine Semenyo, back to his best, struck twice and teed up another, Rayan Cherki produced the kind of impish display that has the Etihad purring, and Enzo Fernandez opened his account for the club.

Haaland completes the set

Erling Haaland’s late contribution carried its own significance. The Norwegian has now scored against all 25 Premier League opponents he has encountered, Sunderland the last name to be crossed off a list that only grows shorter.

Charlie Adam, the former Liverpool midfielder, told BBC Radio 5 Live that the new leaders had made a brilliant beginning to the campaign, while cautioning that they cannot expect to spend an entire season being dragged into man-for-man scraps. He felt Maresca had every right to send his players into the break with genuine pride.

The fixtures will test that soon enough. City resume with a trip to an unbeaten Liverpool on Sunday 11 October, and by then we will know rather more about whether this was a side peaking early or a genuine title machine gathering pace.

Full match report: BBC Sport.