Unusually for Manchester City, they are still spinning a few plates in the transfer market with the season having already kicked off.
Erling Haaland’s brilliant brace helped Manchester City kick off their quest for an unprecedented fourth straight top-flight title with victory at promoted Burnley.
Just two months on from winning the Champions League to become the second Treble winners in English football history, Pep Guardiola’s men returned to competitive action with a bang at Turf Moor.
Star man Haaland’s excellent first-half double and a close-range Rodri effort did the damage as City ran out 3-0 winners in the Premier League curtain raiser at Vincent Kompany’s Burnley
Mail Sport’s Jack Gaughan takes a look at some of the things you might have missed on Friday night.
Man City boss Pep Guardiola is still interested in signing Lucas Paqueta and Jeremy Doku
Erling Haaland started the new season the same way he ended the last one back in amongst the goals
Your browser does not support iframes.
Pep targets more transfer deals
Incomings are still likely and both West Ham’s Lucas Paqueta and Jeremy Doku of Rennes remain of interest.
Rennes are expecting to field a bid from City for Doku, a tricky winger valued at more than £30million, over the coming week.
As for outgoings, Aymeric Laporte and Joao Cancelo are still looking to move. Cancelo again failed to make the bench — just as he did for last week’s Community Shield — with teenager Rico Lewis featuring at left back.
Mail Sport understands that Pep Guardiola’s issues with Cancelo had been festering since the 2021-22 campaign and not just following last year’s World Cup.
Lewis struck by lighter
Burnley have strongly condemned a first-half incident at Turf Moor in which Manchester City defender Rico Lewis was the target of a missile thrown by a fan.
The club said: ‘This is unacceptable. The person responsible has been identified and removed from the ground by the police.
‘Any individual found guilty of throwing missiles within the stadium will receive a banning order.’
Manchester City star Rico Lewis was struck by a lighter at Burnley on Friday night
Not the lesson Kompany had hoped for
After City beat Burnley 6-0 in the FA Cup a few months back, Vincent Kompany told his players in the dressing room to ‘take the lesson, next time it will be a different game’.
It was in fact very similar: Burnley were great in spells but City had too much cutting edge.
De Bruyne suffers another injury
For City, Kevin De Bruyne’s season started how the last one ended: coming off injured before half-time.
It was a hamstring in Istanbul and seemingly a knee problem at Turf Moor.
He looked thoroughly dejected wandering down the tunnel – as did Erling Haaland at the break, on the receiving end of a lengthy lecture by his manager.
An animated Guardiola even pushed a TV camera out of his face as he rebuked the striker, who already had two goals to his name.
Turf Moor the key for Burnley this term
Turf Moor is going to win Burnley some points this season.
Vincent Kompany’s invigorating game plans give this crowd more energy and those two ingredients are a recipe for survival.
City were in a game as the Clarets had four pressing players, including new signing Sander Berge – who only joined from Sheffield United on Wednesday. They’re quick to get moving on turning over possession, with new forwards Luca Koleosho and Zeki Amdouni both direct in the final third.
It’ll cause lots of problems for lesser teams.
Burnley forwards Luca Koleosho and Zeki Amdouni were both direct in the final third
