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 unheeded.
It really was bad too, with City failing to do the basics of defending dead ball situations that served them so well last season in winning the league by a point. Having conceded one from corners and free-kicks across the whole of the last campaign, they have now let in three in their last two fixtures.
After just three minutes, Ederson came to smother a ball in his penalty area and fumbled it, with Joao Cancelo making a tactical foul outside the box to avert any danger. Eberechi Eze swung it in from the right and Kevin De Bruyne headed it onto the back of Kyle Walker's head, where it then hit John Stones and flew past Ederson.
Guardiola had seen enough to be waving his arms frantically on the touchline, asking for more intensity straight from the kick-off and getting increasingly frustrated at the team's inability to stretch the play wide - particularly on the left. With Vicente Guaita taking as much time as he could from every goal kick, the City manager was sprinting inside the opening 10 minutes to retrieve balls to restart play.
The Blues looked better when it wasn't on the pitch though, as after 20 minutes Joachim Andersen rose unmarked to head home an Eze corner. If you can't defend set-pieces, you don't tend to win football matches.
With so little firepower on the bench, Guardiola was about to make a double change of Ilkay Gundogan and Julian Alvarez minutes into the second half when 'Barcelona-loving' Bernardo made his quality count. Preferred in the midfield here to captain Ilkay Gundogan, the Portugal international dragged his team back into the game with a weaving run and shot that was deflected in off Jeffrey Schlupp.
Within ten minutes - and after the double change had been made - Haaland made his first positive contribution of the match by heading home Foden's cross from the six-yard box after Alvarez had helped the ball on. Haaland was synonymous with the team display: he hadn't played well up to that point yet suddenly came alive and from nowhere the Etihad was rocking, moans of frustration transformed into roars of encouragement; just like Newcastle, Palace went from looking completely comfortable to hanging on within ten second-half minutes.
They couldn't hold out for long, and Bernardo and Haaland were there again. The silky midfielder exchanged one-twos with both De Bruyne and Alvarez from a corner before finding Stones to roll the ball across to Haaland for a tap-in. And when the striker left Joel Ward on the floor ten minutes later to complete a sensational hat-trick in another sensational City game (more exciting than the manager would like!) certain defeat had been turned into another cracking victory.
Guardiola kicked every ball during the 90 minutes, showing his pain in the first half and then delight as his team turned it around. Having thanked the fans for their support in his first two programme notes of the season, he led the players around all of the stands after this game to applaud them for their efforts.
City's injury worries haven't gone away, and a smattering of boos at half-time were a stark reminder of the standards that are expected at the Etihad. With the board not looking like acting in the final days of the transfer window, it does look like a risk for the Blues to carry such a small squad into an assault on four competitions.
But while there is players of the quality of Haaland and Bernardo, and the spirit of the whole team to respond to setbacks, it will take something special to defeat this team. Having already claimed the coup of the transfer window in beating Real Madrid and Barcelona to the signing of the No.9 everyone wanted, keeping Bernardo out of everyone else's clutches may prove to be the second-best bit of business for City's campaign.
Barcelona can only watch and admire.
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