Erling Haaland breaks record to send Manchester City top with West Ham win

On 7o minutes the inevitable occurred: Erling Haaland stampeded forward, took Jack Grealish’s delivery, and with Lukasz Fabianski advancing this phenomenon feathered a spiralling lob over West Ham’s goalkeeper for a record Premier League goal No 35.

It eclipsed the counts of Alan Shearer and Andy Cole and, more vitally, doubled Manchester City’s lead against a doughty West Ham United and by the final whistle it was 3-0, and Pep Guardiola’s blue machine was on top again with four matches remaining in the quest to emulate Manchester United and claim a hat-trick of titles.

For this first of City’s two games in hand over Arsenal, Guardiola had decided to rest Ederson so Stefan Ortega enjoyed a competition debut: this had appeared a faint gamble yet by the end it was merely the manager’s latest smart decision.

The sickness bug that ruled out Declan Rice, Tomas Soucek and Nayef Aguerd would surely make this an even tougher night for the visitors despite the absence of Ederson and Kevin De Bruyne.

So it was as City soon had Riyad Mahrez swinging in a corner from the left, though this was a mishit affair. Then a fluid move involving Bernardo Silva and Grealish teed the Algerian up and he forced Fabianski to save low, on the turf, to his right.

A corner was the result, again from the left, Mahrez this time dropped the ball on the head of Nathan Aké, back after a hamstring problem, and West Ham escaped. Theirs was a strategy of quick breaks and set-pieces, and when Vladimir Coufal pinged a free-kick into City’s area he aimed it at the lurking Michail Antonio.

There was more of the same: this time Kyle Walker took out Emerson Palmieri down the left-hand side of West Ham and a quick dead ball had Pablo Fornals pinging a cross in