Marseille 0 Man City 3: Torres, Gundogan and Sterling strike as Citizens cement top spot in Champions League group
EVERY cloud has a Silva lining.
Manchester City fans were devastated when their iconic former midfielder David Silva left in the summer after ten glorious years.
But the man who took over his famous No21 shirt, Ferran Torres, is doing a decent job of filling his magical boots.
The £20.8million summer signing grew up idolising the Spanish World Cup winner at Valencia so knew exactly what he was taking on.
And already Torres is making a real impact in the Champions League – the one competition missing from Silva’s CV.
His opener here – after a calamitous mistake by Valentin Rongier – was his second goal in successive European games.
And how ironic it would be if the 20-year-old proved to be the man who finally helped City crack it after all those of trying for Silva.
With both Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus out injured, Pep Guardiola was again left with no central strikers for this one.
So Torres got the nod to play down the middle – and his early goal set the tone for City’s best performance of the season so far.
Ilkay Gundogan and Raheem Sterling both got on the scoresheet late on as they ended up winning at a canter and continued their perfect start to their tenth successive UCL campaign.
Importantly for City, Kevin De Bruyne was fit enough to captain the side and Phil Foden was also back in the starting XI after his impressive cameo at West Ham.
At the other end, he was able to pair another new boy, Ruben Dias, alongside fit-again Aymeric Laporte.
Costing just under £120m between them, you would imagine they will be the first-choice centre-back pairing for the foreseeable future.
While City have yet to get past the quarter-final in four years under Pep, they have generally made light work of the group stage and were unbeaten in their last 12 going into this one.
Even on the road, they have rarely come unstuck – losing just one of their last ten.
By contrast Marseille, for all their European pedigree, had lost their last ten matches in this competition.
And they were on the back foot right from the start here with City looking in the mood.
De Bruyne saw a volley deflected over before he crossed for Dias – who planted a free header high over the bar.
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Marseille were pinned back in their own half as Foden fired a volley straight at Steve Mandanda.
In this kind of mood, City do not need a helping hand but they got one from Rongier who inexplicably passed straight to De Bruyne on the right-hand side of the box.
He rolled the ball across for Torres who had the simple task of slotting in his second Champions League goal of the season.
It was a landmark for Guardiola too – the 600th goal City have scored under him in just over four years.
At an average of 2.5 per game it has rarely been dull for their fans.
Former Tottenham and Chelsea coach Andre Villas-Boas must have feared it would be a long night for his team at that time.
They struggled to create anything to trouble Ederson but at least they kept the score down to one.
They did very nearly present City with a second as Torres won a tackle on the edge of the box and Oleks Zinchenko nipped in but his low shot clipped the outside of the post.
Marseille finished as runners-up in the shortened last French season but did not seem equipped to trouble Guardiola’s men.
Mind you, that was five places above Lyon – the team who famously dumped City out of this competition last season.
And they went out to Monaco in the last 16 in 2017 – so Guardiola would not have taken anything for granted here.
He spoke ahead of the game about the importance of clinching qualification early with such a punishing schedule ahead – and his team looked in the mood to do that.
The home side almost got a surprise leveller early in the second half.
Former Newcastle forward Florian Thauvin let fly from 20 yards and Ederson seemed to mis-judge it – as it evaded him and smacked the outside of the post.
They had to take more chances which meant things were opening up a bit for City but Sterling and Foden could not capitalise on promising opportunities.
The England Under-21 ace was involved as City did put the game to bed as he crossed for the back post where Sterling headed back across goal.
It fell perfectly for Gundogan – who like Torres also scored against Porto last week – to slide home and give City some breathing space.
And inside the last ten minutes a classic Pep goal wrapped it up as De Bruyne found space down the right and squared for Sterling to tap home his fifth of the season.
It’s only one game – and whisper it quietly – but after a testing few weeks this was much more like the City of old.
