Haaland fires another hat-trick as City thrash Forest

Erling Haaland continued his assault on the Premier League with a second successive hat-trick for Manchester City in the 6-0 win over Nottingham Forest. The 22-year-old bagged a 26-minute first-half treble to put Forest to the sword, just four days after doing the same to Crystal Palace.

He is now the first player in the Premier League era to score nine goals in his first five games and surely Andy Cole and Alan Shearer's record high of 34 goals in a season will get shattered this term. This was also a story about another new City striker as Julian Alvarez marked his first Premier League start with a brace after the break, with Joao Cancelo also scoring.

The hammering took City's goals-for column up to 19 in five games and highlighted just how hard they are going to be to stop this season. Forest, who have shown enough already this term to suggest their return to the top tier will not be a fleeting one, will be happy to get this fixture out of the way early on and will view Saturday's clash against Bournemouth with far more relish.

Haaland was less than two years old when Forest, who his dad used to play for, last visited Manchester City in the league and City are an unrecognisable club from the one that won that second-tier clash 3-0 back in 2002. They have dominated the Premier League in recent years and are an even more frightening prospect with Haaland now spearheading the attack.

This is Forest's first season back in the top flight since 1999 and their evening soon became about damage limitation after Haaland's early double put them in cruise control. He needed only 12 minutes to break the deadlock as he showed a brilliant instinct to get in front of Joe Worrall at the near post and stab Phil Foden's cross past Dean