As Nathan Ake collapsed into the arms of Josko Gvardiol, Fulham’s players took a standing ovation. As Pep Guardiola seemed to rebuke Savinho, home supporters bounced in their wooden seats.
Manchester City won, in case you’re wondering. But it needed a quick glance up at Craven Cottage’s scoreboard just to check.
The history ought to have been all Erling Haaland’s, the quickest centurion of all time. One of the craziest nights in the Premier League era had other ideas, the sort deserving of its own Wikipedia page.
Manchester City scored five and escaped with victory. Guardiola dumbfounded, City 5-1 up before the hour and ended up almost dropping points. The seventh highest-scoring game in the Premier League era, Fulham sympathisers roaring ‘proud but gutted’ as they spilled out onto the street.
There are huge questions of City’s resolve to study here. Why they appear to fall away in the second halves of matches, why what felt like a defiant and spellbinding response to an abject display against Leeds United on Saturday could not sustain itself.
Those will be topics rattling around Guardiola’s head but what will have kept Marco Silva up overnight is that gnawing of regret, that remorse at Gvardiol’s heroic hooking Josh King’s equaliser-in-wait off the line in the 98th minute. Or if VAR might have intervened with a late penalty shout when City’s back four did not know which way was up and wore haunted, startled looks.
This was plenty better than Leeds but the inability to maintain control of games they had under their spell is completely unsustainable if this is to become a proper title race with Arsenal. Despite everything, City are within two points of Mikel Arteta’s side – and the Gunners are off to Aston Villa at the weekend.
‘I have experience enough to make long, long runs to win the Premier League,’ the City boss said. ‘The league is so long. Many things can happen. We’ve been behind by six points and won it. The team who wins the league is the team who grows and this is what we try to do.’
Yet conceding three goals in 21 minutes – two from the marvellous substitute Samuel Chukwueze after Alex Iwobi’s stunningly measured 25-yarder – is not what champions do. Iwobi’s goal was a nice moment and offered some impetus but ultimately felt meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
How wrong that was. At 5-2, Guardiola still called in Nico Gonzalez to save his legs. Those would have been jellied on the bench by the end of proceedings.
Chukwueze’s second, placed into the far corner, shone a light on another City issue – the Nigerian gobbling up Gianluigi Donnarumma’s weak punch from a corner. Guardiola watched his team drop deeper and deeper, Chukwueze’s double coming from unoccupied space. He says that the transition of this team, with a raft of new signings, might lead to more occasions like this.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ he grinned. ‘I lost my hair. We’ll learn from this. I was watching my watch more than the game!’
City clung on for dear life in a final quarter that could have been a lifetime away from Haaland’s hitting 100. Obviously there was no pre-rehearsed routine for the moment. No special celebration. In the driving rain, arms aloft, there was something biblical about the way Haaland marked the milestone.
A century of Premier League goals in 111 games. He stands alone in that respect, looking over his shoulder at a long list of greats who can’t catch him because their time has been and gone. Thirteen faster than Alan Shearer, 30 than Harry Kane, 36 than Sergio Aguero. It took Thierry Henry 160.
Nobody has ever reached 100 quicker than this and if anybody does so in the future then the watching public are in for an even bigger treat than this classic. What English football has witnessed over the last three-and-a-half seasons is unfathomable brute and unquestionable beauty.
Phil Foden – brilliant again – scored twice, Tijjani Reijnders galloping clear with his own dink too. City did lots of things that will cheer Guardiola up until Jeremy Doku’s deflected effort sailing over Leno off Sander Berge and Fulham did lots for Marco Silva to relish thereafter. Emile Smith Rowe had scored earlier before the Chukwueze show, with City left counting down the minutes.
‘They finished with three central defenders,’ Silva said. ‘They tried to delay things whenever the ball went out. It’s in the rules, they can do it. Every team would try to calm the game down. If it was us we’d get some yellow cards. We pushed them.’
Guardiola was actually critical of Haaland hitting a post at 5-2, asserting that would have settled the game, before summing this all up rather nicely.
‘It was tough but with time I’ll remember that day that I was there in this magnificent traditional stadium, the vibe. It’s the Premier League.’
He’s never been more right.
