Man City winners and losers from first ten games of the season

A common cliche in football is to only judge a player, or manager, or team after ten games. It's often a tactic to deflect from a poor start, although ten games does provide a reasonable amount of evidence to support how well a side is doing.

Pep Guardiola may not entertain any definite judgements being made of his side until Manchester City have played every team in the Premier League, though, and he's previously referred to a season of two halves for 2022/23 with the World Cup break coming in November. City are also anything but a struggling side at the moment, too.

Still, with the first international break upon us, City are ten competitive games into the new season after a summer of unusually high turnover in the transfer market. This feels a time as good as any to reflect on their start, and especially pick our some players who have had a better opening to the season and some who will need to kick on when domestic football resumes.

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The standout player for City so far has clearly been Erling Haaland, who has 14 goals and one assist in his nine Premier League and Champions League games - plus the Community Shield defeat to Liverpool. Averaging a goal or assist every 54 minutes, City would be nine points worse off in the Premier League and in Europe without Haaland's goals, and the striker has instantly transformed how the Blues play. When 'winners' are being discussed, Haaland has to be mentioned first.

Then there is Jack Grealish, who came into the side after a promising pre-season tour in the USA. Benefitting from Raheem Sterling's departure to get more playing time on the left, as well as using a year of experience at