There is little chance of Manchester City going away. This was a second successive 4-1 win owed to clinical finishing and impeccable timing, the returning Erling Haaland breaching a spirited Southampton at the end of a relatively flat first half.
Haaland would score again, brilliantly, after Jack Grealish doubled the lead; Sékou Mara offered brief hope of a Saints revival but Julián Álvarez quickly converted a penalty and sent all eyes towards Arsenal’s Easter Sunday visit to Liverpool.
Should the league leaders fail to win, City’s destiny will be in their own hands. Outwardly, one of the biggest among Southampton’s many difficulties was that this could not be written off as a free hit.
Those do not exist over Easter, and certainly not when you start the evening four points shy of safety. Rubén Sellés had expressed confidence in his players’ capacity to overhaul that deficit and could perhaps reflect St Mary’s had not been a happy hunting ground for City over the past year.