Erling Haaland proves Pep Guardiola point as Man City boss fumes

Maybe, just maybe, winning another Treble might not be straightforward for Manchester City this season.

It is only six weeks since Pep Guardiola's side were at Goodison Park staring at a sixth Premier League game in seven without a victory, yet some are already talking of another Manchester City coronation as inevitable. Saturday's slog of a 2-0 home win against Everton supported the manager's claim that there is only the tiniest of chances of an unprecedented repeat.

Perhaps in part because of the title chatter back circling around his team, Guardiola had been particularly gloomy about their home displays against Everton in his pre-match press conference. Recent meetings don't necessarily back that up but the two draws in his first two years about the club would have had the manager tearing his hair out if he could; they missed two penalties in a 1-1 draw in 2016 and then missed so many chances the following year in a 1-1 repeat that he locked himself in his office to sulk and try to comprehend how his team could win games.

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That draw would be City's last in the league for 19 games as they went on a league-record run to win their first of many titles, and they have now equalled this season's best of six in a row. It was anything but easy, though.

If you could bottle up all the key ingredients of a Saturday early kick-off, it would come out looking exactly like Saturday's game did. Guardiola's patience was thin early on and got progressively worse as his team failed to find a spark and Everton slowed the game down at every opportunity; it felt like not a City attack went by in the second