Haaland and Man City are now on a mission to prove a point about Guardiola

Arne Slot’s version of Liverpool in the early stages of the 2025-26 season is a warning to any Premier League manager. Five Premier League matches, five wins, including a victory in the Merseyside derby.

And Slot already had a title in the bank. So when it comes to reading significance into a small sample of games in August and September, the reservations are obvious.

But watching Manchester City on and off the pitch at Old Trafford, it was hard not to wonder if this is a squad that has been re-energised by the managerial change. That sounds heinous to suggest, obviously.

And don’t forget, Pep Guardiola did bow out by winning two trophies in his final season and his team finished as Premier League runners-up. Hardly a shabby campaign.

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But even though Guardiola also counted a Manchester derby win - a less controversial 3-0 verdict at the Etihad - amongst his early successes last season, his side lost two of their opening four Premier League games. Enzo Maresca has won four out of four, complementing those wins with a 2-0 Champions League victory in Porto.

All four Premier League wins have been in different styles but the players have quickly bought into Maresca, it seems. Not just the players.

Everyone is happy if your club has just won a Manchester derby with ten men on opposition turf. That goes without saying.

But the reaction of the backroom staff - of which there were plenty - was as involved and as euphoric as City supporters have probably seen for quite some time. Again, it is understandable when you win by a single goal at Old Trafford, having had a player very harshly dismissed early doors.

But it was still significant. If some players and staff have been refreshed by a change of voice and approach, it would not be the biggest surprise. Guardiola was a very demanding manager. Brilliant but demanding, a perfectionist.

Maresca could well turn out to be similarly demanding, but he is still getting to know the different characters at the club. The jury will be out for some time on Maresca’s chances of making a decent fist of the impossible job of following a decade of Pep’s brilliance. Of course it will. He will be measured in trophies.

But derby wins for City do not come much more treasured than the one he helped produce at Old Trafford. Tactically, he got it spot-on, his deployment of Iliman Ndiaye a mini masterstroke. And it is clear he likes a gritty player. Who doesn’t?

Elliot Anderson and Enzo Fernandez were arch-disruptors against United and you can expect Maresca’s City to be perhaps a little more feisty than they were under Guardiola. And you can expect them to rise to the challenge.

Guardiola is and was a genius. But Erling Haaland and the players he has left at the Etihad - and, true, a few have gone - will be out to prove a point.

It might only be subconsciously, but they will be out to prove that City’s success over the past ten years was not just down to one man. And perhaps that is why the celebrations at the end of the derby win were even more euphoric.