Telling Man City reactions to Erling Haaland speak volumes in Premier League rout

Manchester City are top of the league.

It's a sentence people are used to hearing, but this is the first time in nearly five months that the champions will spend a day on top of the Premier League table. By the end of Sunday, they may be back down to third again.

But you never know, and that is the point. Nobody will have strong memories of a one-sided win over Luton town yet City are doing all that can be expected of them in the title race and putting pressure on the teams above them to follow suit.

Liverpool wilted last week, taking the lead against an inferior side and battering them on the shot count but failing to make their dominance pay and dropping points. That will have been the half-time warning for City after an opening 45 minutes where the shot count was 19-0 but only one goal separated the teams.

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It hadn't been a vintage performance, summed up by the second successive City goal inside the opening two minutes. Whereas Bernardo Silva's strike in Madrid owed much to creativity and quick-thinking, Erling Haaland managed to miss a one-on-one with Thomas Kaminski and then when it came back to him his acrobatic volley was flying well wide before it took a big deflection off Daiki Hashioka and flew into the net.

That could have opened the floodgates, and Luton were suitably worried. Manager Rob Edwards called his defenders over, Hashioka received some attention on the pitch while a Luton analyst swore in frustration in the first half as City dominated.

It almost felt like City were trying too hard for a goal though. Players were getting in each other's way trying