Manchester City beat Slovan Bratislava 4-0 in the Champions League last night on what was a very comfortable night.
After three draws in the last four games before this clash, Manchester City fans were hoping to see a convincing performance and win in Slovakia.
And the players certainly delivered.
Ilkay Gundogan gave City an early lead with Phil Foden making it two shortly after.
In the second-half, Rico Lewis played in Erling Haaland for his customary goal, before James McAtee scored his first goal for the club.
In truth, it might have been double figures for City, who created chance after chance.
There has been plenty of praise for the likes of Lewis, Foden and Gundogan after last night’s game, but Jack Grealish sent a nice message to a player not too many people are talking about.
Jack Grealish sends three-word message to Manuel Akanji after Man City beat Slovan Bratislava
Slovan Bratislava were always going to find it hard to get anything from last night’s game with City.
The game pretty much went as everyone expected it to. It was so one-sided, with the gulf between the two teams very evident.
It felt like a training session at times, but City still had a job to do.
It was a very comfortable night, especially for the defenders. Although Jack Grealish was still left impressed by Manuel Akanji, commenting ‘What a player’ on the Swiss star’s Instagram post from this morning.
Akanji played for just over an hour last night before being replaced by Ruben Dias.
While he was on the pitch, he had 63 touches of the ball, and completed 53/57 (93%) passes – one of which was ‘key’ (via Sofascore).
It was a pretty faultless display from the former Borussia Dortmund man, who has once again been one of the team’s most consistent players this season.
Akanji solid as ever
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Realistically, last night was a walk in the park for Akanji and his fellow defenders
Slovan hardly offered any attacking threat, so it was a case of him just retaining possession and trying to find the midfielders and wingers in space.
But Akanji has certainly enjoyed a solid start to the new season, making eight appearances so far for a total of 691 minutes.
The 29-year-old, who recently spoke about how impressively versatile he’s become at City, has played the joint-most minutes for City so far this season alongside Haaland, indicating just what an important player he is for Pep.
With every game City play, it becomes harder to compute how City managed to sign Akanji for just £15 million.
He is without a doubt one of the club’s biggest bargains since the 2008 takeover.
