Manchester City vs Chelsea: Maurizio Sarri under pressure as champions return to the top

Five things we learned: Patience will be wearing thin with Sarri at Stamford Bridge but City march on having safely navigated a potentially difficult week

City back on top in style

To take nine points in eight days from Arsenal, Everton and Chelsea was never thought to be beyond this Manchester City side but, even so, the significance of winning three from three should not be understated.

After the defeat at St James’ Park, Pep Guardiola needed a faultless week from his players and he cannot be happier with how it went. This third, final and emphatic victory was City’s most complete performance since beating Liverpool at the turn of the year.

That it came against Chelsea, the first team to beat Guardiola’s side this season, made it only more significant. Guardiola will hope that by emerging through their most testing week of the campaign to date, City have put their midwinter struggles to bed.

Patience running out with Sarri’s project

Much was made of Chelsea’s victory at Stamford Bridge in December but Chelsea were not as commanding that day as the 2-0 scoreline suggested. Maurizio Sarri admitted as much earlier this week, claiming that his side had been “lucky” to win at the Bridge.

Two months later, no slice of good fortune would be enough to bridge the clear gulf in quality and organisation between these two sides.

This time, the few long passes out from the back that David Luiz attempted were quickly snuffed out. Eden Hazard was tracked and crowded out when in possession. Gonzalo Higuain, a new arrival since December, brought precious little to the party.

This was ultimately a much fairer reflection of the difference between a team three years in the making and another floundering in its first. Guardiola was shown patience after a difficult debut year in Manchester. Unless Chelsea improve quickly, Sarri is unlikely to be given the same time.

Jorginho underwhelms once again

Just as before the Community Shield in August and the meeting at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s midfield fulcrum Jorginho was at the centre of the pre-match build-up and attention.

Yet the former City target’s start to life in English football has been underwhelming enough to date for us to wonder what all the fuss was about. Like the defeat at Tottenham, here was another ‘top six’ meeting which passed him by.

Sarri warned his player that he would be the key to any success at the Etihad. “It will be really very difficult to be in control of the match,” he said on Friday. “The match is there [in midfield], more than in the strikers.”

What does it say, then, that Chelsea never threatened and fell to a 5-0 defeat? The ease with which City broke through their opponents’ midfield in the first half, progressing the ball into the final third in a matter of seconds, was itself an indictment on Jorginho’s performance.

Meanwhile, at the base of City’s midfield, a 33-year-old Fernandinho consistently dominates opponents and lays the foundations for victory, defying those who worried for the champions when Jorginho turned down their advances.

Sterling’s sharp shooting

It is a curious fact about Raheem Sterling’s development under Guardiola that despite scoring 37 times over the past season-and-a-half, he has simultaneously picked up a reputation for being wasteful in front of goal.

Whether that be due to a handful of key misses or the long barren spell he endured at international level, it is an unfair appraisal of one of the Premier League’s sharpest finishers, as he showed when opening the scoring after only four minutes.

It was a typical Sterling goal - scored at the far post, finished first-time after a cut-back from the byline - and it is because of these goals that he has a better conversion rate than Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane or even hat-trick hero Sergio Aguero.

Sterling followed his first with another late on, once again coolly dispatched from close range. Few players in the top-flight can match him when it comes to converting opportunities into goals, despite his reputation.

Barkley pays the price for poor decision making

Much like everything else at Stamford Bridge, Ross Barkley’s renaissance under Sarri has stalled of late.

The playmaker began the campaign reborn, hailing his new manager’s influence on his game, but he is yet to establish himself as a regular starter and those eye-catching displays in the autumn seem a long time ago.

Throughout his career, Barkley’s moments of promise have always been undermined by poor decisions and he has rarely made a decision as bad as that which led to Aguero’s second of the afternoon and City’s third.

Only he knows why he decided, when tussling with Aymeric Laporte, to head the ball into Chelsea’s penalty area and back towards his own goal. It fell perfectly for Aguero, who nudged the ball past Kepa Arrizabalaga.

Barkley received little in the way of condolence from his team-mates after committing the error and only a few limp high-fives once he was brought off early in the second half.

It could hardly be described as a decisive error given the margin of City's victory but it could prove costly to Barkley's attempts to revive his career.