First half goals from Fernando, Yaya Toure and David Silva soon had the spoils in safe keeping as the Champions equalled a Club record nine wins in succession.
Fernando opened his City account in the 8th minute with a close-range over-head kick after a Jesus Navas cross was deflected and it spun out of Ben Foster’s hands.
Four minutes later it was 2-0 when Silva’s twinkling toes drew a rash challenge from ex-Etihad favourite Joleon Lescott and Yaya Toure side-footed home the penalty with casual insouciance.
Number three came just after the half hour with Navas again to the fore down Albion’s porous and largely unguarded left flank before finding Silva who, with a wave of his wand of a left foot despatched the ball beyond Foster and into the bottom corner.
Having watched Chelsea stretch the lead at the top to six points with a win over West Ham in the Premier League’s early kick-off, City thus produced the perfect riposte.
The current renewal of the title race is becoming a punch and counter-punch classic and the frequency of the matches only adding to the drama. This episode was no different.
Apart from offering the first chance to show off freshly unwrapped Club merchandise to fellow fans – thank you Santa – Boxing Day is traditionally a time of shock results and defensive largesse in English football.
West Brom’s Hawthorns home, boasting as it does in the title ‘highest ground in England’, is just the sort of place most top sides would prefer not to visit in the middle of the busiest period of the season.
A raucous home crowd still imbued with the festive sprit and a team fighting for its existence at the foot of the table can be an awkward combination; City know this only too well from a visit to Sunderland on December 26 two years ago!
But this side, still shorn of two of the three main strikers, is made of sterner stuff.
Resolute, inventive, fleet of both foot and mind when the need arises; Manuel Pellegrini’s men are currently wearing their champion’s crown with a healthy portion of panache and élan.
Here Silva and Samir Nasri were simply too clever and creative for WBA who couldn’t keep tabs on the pair or the elusive Jesus Navas who was involved in most of the creative brilliance of the opening 45 minutes.
After their first half onslaught, the visitors never really looked likely to shed points or add to their tally as they went into containment mode and Pellegrini withdrew his playmakers one by one to save their legs for harder battles ahead.
Instead the fourth goal of the game – and the last – fell to the home side after Joe Hart missed his punch from a corner and a spot bagatelle in the goalmouth ended with the ball hitting the shoulder of Ideye and nestling in the corner of the net. It was some reward for Albion who improved after the break and who saw Lescott also go close with a header that landed on the roof of the goal.
However, form suggested City would win. After all West Brom had won just one of their last seven matches and failed to score in nearly half of their league matches this season. Indeed more damning that that statistic was the one that revealed the whole of 2014 had yielded only four wins on home turf for WBA.
City, meanwhile, will now look forward to Sunday when they will look to end the calendar year by setting a new Club record of ten wins in succession. Burnley will not be relishing the prospect of trying to stop the conundrum set by the cleverest of football teams.
