1Wing twins
There can be little count who City’s standout performers were against Watford.
Leroy Sane on the left and Riyad Mahrez on the left gave the home side a torrid time all evening and both deservedly found themselves on the scoresheet.
Sane’s pace is electric, and he now has five goals and four assists in his last six appearances after chesting home from Mahrez’s brilliant in-swinging cross.
But it was the Algerian’s ability to beat defenders and deliver dangerous balls into the box that really stole the show. He capped his superb display with an emphatic left-foot finish in the second half.
They were brilliant throughout.
READ: Watford 1-2 City | Match Report
READ: Pep | We made it hard for ourselves
2In form
City’s form is becoming almost unbelievable.
The win at Watford maintained our unbeaten start to the Premier League season. It’s now 13 wins and two draws from our opening 15 matches.
You have to go back to the 3-2 loss at home to Manchester United at the backend of last season to find our last league defeat – that’s 21 games (18 wins, three draws).
And it’s just two defeats in our last 60 Premier League games, a quite remarkable statistic that underlines the depth of quality this squad possesses.
3Goal difference
We’ve scored 45 league goals this season and conceded just seven.
Our plus 35 goal difference is the best any side has managed at this stage of an English top-flight campaign for 125 years.
The Sunderland side of 1892-93 were the last to manage such a healthy tally, with a plus 39 goal difference after 15 matches.
4Rotation
With City in the midst of a run of 14 games in 44 days, rotation really will be key.
Pep Guardiola made six changes to his lineup for the game at Vicarage Road, with Kyle Walker, Vincent Kompany, Fabian Delph, Riyad Mahrez, David Silva and John Stones all coming into the side.
It was difficult to tell there’d been such a significant shakeup. City’s play – for 85 minutes, at least – was as cohesive and expressive as ever.
5Room for improvement
Guardiola is known as a perfectionist and his post-match comments served to underline that assertion.
“We started to lose balls and let them have the opportunity to come back,” he said. “And of course when they score with ten mins left you suffer. In this league you have to score the third goal and we didn’t do that, that’s why we suffer.”
City were imperious for 85 minutes, but somehow contrived to stutter over the line after a frenzied final period that saw us become disjointed and chaotic. Watford scored and then peppered our box with dangerous high balls. They could easily have snatched the most unlikely of draws.
But Guardiola will use that as a weapon to warn his players: there can be no relaxing in this league.
6Centurion
It was a special night for Nicolas Otamendi.
The Argentine defender made his 100th Premier League appearance for the Club after coming off the bench for the closing stages.
Congratulations, Nico!
