Manchester City are into the international break three points clear at the top of the Premier League. They are also, on the evidence of Sunday's 5-3 win over Sunderland, a team that has developed a worrying habit of leaving the back door open.
Enzo Maresca's first international break as City manager arrives with his side undefeated at 7-0. Five league matches have produced 15 points. At the same stage last season, City had seven.
The progress is real. The defending is not.
Sunderland Made Them Work for It
Sunderland were never supposed to make this difficult. They did. An early Enzo Fernandez goal — the January arrival opening his account in the ninth minute — should have settled things. It didn't. Brian Brobbey levelled three minutes later, dicing through two defenders and squeezing the ball past Gianluigi Donnarumma, and the pattern was set.
Every time City built momentum in the first half and into the early stages of the second, Sunderland found a response. They were feisty, organised and utterly unbothered by the reputation of the team in front of them. Even a point looked like it might be a stretch at times.
The match unfolded as a question not of whether City could outscore Sunderland, but whether they could outscore Brobbey. For long stretches, there was no clear answer.
Brobbey's Day Out
The 24-year-old Dutchman had a hat-trick inside 60 minutes. He was everywhere, and City had no answer for him. This is a player who hadn't scored in league play before Sunday. His run was as shocking as it was impressive.
In a match fuelled by elite forward play, Brobbey operated at a level all his own. That is not a sentence anyone expected to write about a Sunderland striker at the Etihad.
Haaland's Frustration, Then Relief
While Antoine Semenyo was enjoying a two-goal afternoon, Erling Haaland was being kept quiet. In the first half, he had a goal on his right boot with the goal open in front of him, and he missed it completely. The kind of chance he converts in his sleep — just not against Sunderland, not until the 81st minute.
When he finally bundled one in, the flag went up. VAR intervened, reviewed it and allowed the goal. Haaland can now cross Sunderland off the ever-shrinking list of teams he hasn't scored against. It was that kind of afternoon: scratchy, awkward, eventually productive.
The Defence Is a Problem
City should have won this comfortably. Offensively, they were at their best. Defensively, they were atrocious.
This is not a new issue. Against Norwich City in last week's Carabao Cup tie, the same wide-open spaces appeared — Norwich simply lacked the quality to punish them. Sunderland had Brobbey, and Brobbey had the game of his life.
Had City defended like this against Arsenal, they might have conceded eight. That is not hyperbole. The sleepy starts — the tendency to allow early runs at goal before finding their rhythm — have to stop. Better squads than Sunderland and Norwich will bury City early if this continues. And if the title race is tight late in the season, that is a habit nobody wants to be relying on.
Maresca heads into his first international break with a perfect record and a three-point cushion. The view from the top is pleasant. The view of his own defence, on this evidence, is not.