Priceless Bernardo Silva turns Man City discontent into delight

If it was worth paying £51m for Erling Haaland solely to beat Crystal Palace at home, Manchester City's latest thrilling comeback owed more to the man that Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain haven't stumped up the funds for.

It may be no bad thing if the phone lines are disconnected at the Etihad for the remainder of the transfer window if it ensured Bernardo Silva stays at the club this season. He was a class apart as, for the second week in succession, City were 2-0 down and heading for seeming certain defeat before stunning their opponents with a second-half blitz including a hat-trick from Haaland.

Pep Guardiola was under pressure to show immediate benefits from their unusual mid-season friendly at Barcelona, and the squad arrived showing further cracks. Already without Jack Grealish from injury in the Bournemouth game and Nathan Ake at Newcastle, the blows taken by Kalvin Phillips and Luke Mbete at Camp Nou were enough to reduce the manager's options further for this one.

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None of those players are integral to the first team, yet losing four bodies in an already-small squad has exposed the lack of depth in the group; nobody can expect Claudio Gomes and Ben Knight to come off the bench and influence a Premier League game with zero appearances between them.

With discontent bubbling among the fanbase over the lack of depth in the squad and with just days left in the transfer window, this was not the start to gain any confidence in the board's stance that no further reinforcements are needed. The woeful defending from Newcastle carried into the Etihad as Guardiola's warning to avoid mistakes against a Palace team that had seen them drop five points last season went