Dominant City warm up for Manchester derby by putting four past Club Brugge |

Professional second-half performance from City after being surprisingly pegged back via Stones own goal
Mahrez restores lead before subs Sterling and Jesus add third and fourth goals
City move top of group A and require just a point to reach knockout stages

The two great football clubs of Manchester meet on Saturday lunchtime and there can be no doubt after this Champions League performance that the team under Pep Guardiola’s aegis are in the ascendancy when it comes to all the usual principles that define successful sides.

This was just another bewitching performance in Europe from the Premier League champions, against a Club Brugge side that for all their limitations at the elite end of the game, have caused problems for some serious names in the competition this season. They were swept aside for a second time by City, this time with a mercifully low scoreline for the kind of performance that was delivered by Guardiola’s side and completed by Raheem Sterling’s first goal for his club since August 21.

The Englishman was a substitute once again and may well have to settle for that job at Old Trafford in three days’ time although in a team this fluent it is hard to see how he can argue. City controlled the game disproportionately even by their standards, and while there was an own goal from John Stones that levelled the match for as long as 40 minutes it was only a slight hesitation from City in front of goal that stopped it from being more.

The run of two games without a victory, encompassing League Cup defeat on penalties to West Ham and the shock home defeat to Crystal Palace in the league, is now over. For Ole Gunnar Solskjaer there was very little he did not know already about the old enemy: they chase down everything remorselessly and they will open up the channels with those triangles of passes that no opponent seems able to stop.

There were performances of note all over the side, especially Joao Cancelo with two assists including Phil Foden’s first, and also Ilkay Gundogan, the captain who dropped the ball on Riyad Mahrez’s head for the second goal. The possession count barely wavered below 70 per cent. The question for Solskjaer is whether he allows City to come to Old Trafford and play with this kind of control. The reality is that he may not have much choice.

Dominating games and dominating possession is what City do in the Guardiola era, irrespective of who they play but rarely do they dominate it like they did in the first half. For periods, including the opening ten minutes, Brugge were an inconvenience rather than a full-formed opponent. The champions of Belgium were essentially a human shield reforming again and again behind the ball in an attempt to prevent their eleven players being passed around in their entirety.

They were not entirely successful in that regard, the goal in the 15th minute from Foden coming when it felt like the very last man in the Brugge side, former Liverpool goalkeeper Simon Mignolet, had been manoeuvred the wrong side of the ball. Timing his run from behind the offside line perfectly, Foden emerged beyond the whole Brugge team to side-foot the ball into an empty net. City did the same thing over and again, the same combinations, the same passing channels, the same players. Brugge were unable to stop that. They spent most of the half allowing football to be done unto them.

Except, and this was an astonishing outcome, the visitors ended the half with more attempts on target than City by three to two. They did so in some frantic escapes from the prison of City’s passing one of which resulted in the goal that deflected in off Bernardo Silva and then John Stones from the cross of Charles De Ketelaere after a shot from his strike partner Hans Vanaken. That came two minutes after Foden’s opener and was such a confluence of unlikely factors that it felt unreal. Having said that, Brugge looked good from set-pieces.

City, of course, were on a different planet. Joao Cancelo, who crossed for Foden’s goal, also struck the post on the end of one of countless exchanges between him and Jack Grealish. They worked all the Guardiola principles, switching the play, using the half-spaces between defenders and overlapping endlessly.

For much of it should have been a humiliation for Brugge but they admirably refused to accept that. They have already drawn with Paris Saint-Germain in this group, and beaten RB Leipzig but City at home in the Champions League are a very different prospect on top of that. In the 20-year-old striker De Ketelaere, already a Belgium international, Brugge have a talented player. The former law student carried the ball a couple of times when he was out on his own in a precious few seconds of possession for the away team.

Mahrez finally got the second goal having seconds earlier crossed the ball through an empty box. Brugge had gone close before then when De Ketelaere got himself in a position to shoot and then dragged it wide. A rare breakaway and then it was back to usual business. Gundogan provided the cross for Sterling and then, with the last kick of the game the substitute Gabriel Jesus stroked in the fourth.