Manchester City 5 Crystal Palace 0: Hot-shot Sergio Aguero moves to within a goal of City's all-time record

Pep Guardiola had disappeared down the tunnel at half-time looking very much like a man who was ready to start throwing things in the dressing room. By the final whistle, though, the Manchester City manager was positively beaming, his tongue-lashing at the interval enough to drag his players out of their slumber and inspire a dazzling second-half showing. The 'shark team', as Benjamin Mendy likes to call City, had gobbled up another little fish.

City have now scored 16 goals in their past three Premier League matches without reply. Crystal Palace, by contrast, are the first team in English football league history to start a campaign with six defeats and no goals and remain rooted to the bottom.

With Manchester United and Chelsea up next, Roy Hodgson admitted it was imperative Palace did not find themselves in a “hopeless position” come the end of the month, even though he recognised it could come to that if they fail to shore up defensively.

In fairness, his side had actually played well for much of the first half, and an agitated Guardiola made no attempt to hide his displeasure at his team’s sluggish, slow play, booting his seat in the dug-out in frustration and even telling a ball boy at one point to get the ball back into play more quickly.

But once Leroy Sane, Palace’s destroyer-in-chief, scored on the cusp of the interval, the visiting team’s heads dropped and the second period turned into a chastening experience for the former England manager. As Hodgson said, “it’s ridiculous to talk about positives when you’ve been beaten 5-0” and a potential knee ligament injury to striker Christian Benteke, which will be scanned on Sunday), merely compounded his misery.

Raheem Sterling scored twice to make it 3-0 inside the hour mark before Sergio Aguero moved to within one goal of equalling Eric Brook’s all-time scoring record for City with his 176^th goal for the club. Fabian Delph made it five with a wonderful strike but it was Sane, with a goal and two assists, who shone, with Guardiola confident the Germany winger – who now has five goals in as many games - is back to his best after bluntly declaring he had not deserved to start earlier in the campaign after a poor pre-season. Not that Guardiola had anticipated the eventual landslide after the opening period.

“We forgot that the ball should be moved, in first half when the ball was in possession at the players’ feet it was not good and when that happens everything is slow and when that happens our rhythm and transitions are slow,” said the City manager, whose only concern by the end was a knee injury to Benjamin Mendy that forced the left-back off after 29 minutes when he lunged in on Andros Townsend. “We conceded counter attacks and anything can happen then.

“If you analyse the first 30 minutes of the first half you’d say we not ready to be there [at the top]. The ball boys were slow, everybody was slow. We have to provoke the situations and didn’t but in the second half we were ready.”

It took a moment of magic from Sane to break Palace’s dogged resistance in stoppage time but Guardiola’s furious reaction at the half-time whistle told you everything about his unhappiness at the first half hour in particular.

Fernandinho and Aguero should have scored from chances but a lot of City’s build-up play lacked impetus and Palace were able to penetrate too easily and mount counter-attacks from which Ruben Loftus-Cheek hit a post and hooked another chance across goal.

When the visitors broke forward again after Sane’s goal, Guardiola blew his top. Fist raised, eyes bulging, teeth gritted, he looked ready to hit someone. The Catalan then kicked his seat in the dugout with the full force of his right boot, whipped his coat off the back of the chair and stomped off down the tunnel. “That’s because I don’t like the chair,” Guardiola joked afterwards but his anger his obvious.

A few choice words at the interval clearly had the desired effect, though, and before long Guardiola was applauding warmly from the touchline when Sterling scored twice in quick succession to make it 3-0. The timing of the first goal had been a killer for Palace but spoke volumes for Sane’s talent. Picking up possession on the left flank, he passed inside to Silva who returned a high pass that Sane, stretching for, toe-poked over the head of Scott Dann before slotting a side-foot finish past Wayne Hennessey. 

“Leroy was not good in pre-season in the first games and he didn’t deserve to play,” Guardiola said. “But now I have five strikers and they all deserve to play. Leroy is improving the simple things and he is scoring a lot of goals and gives assists. He’s so important for us.”

One became two when Kevin de Bruyne passed to Sane who crossed from the left for Sterling to tap in and the England forward added a third from Aguero’s cushioned lay-off after a fine cross from De Bruyne to the far post. Aguero got the fourth with a standing header from Sane’s cross and Delph curled in a sublime fifth from 20 yards.

“We’ve been given a headache and in the week now have to find the aspirins that will cure the headache because there’s a risk Manchester United and Chelsea will be as good at causing the same problems if we don’t get it right,” Hodgson said.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re not in a hopeless position by the end of the September. I saw some light at the end of the tunnel in the first half but those lights went out in the second half.”