Manchester City 6-0 Nottm Forest: Haaland scores hat-trick and Alvarez nets brace in rout

Five matches into the season and Erling Haaland’s well over a third of the way to winning the Golden Boot. No, honestly. Go and check the calendar. And then check the previous winners.

Twenty-three has been the magic number in each of the last three campaigns. Twenty-two the one before that. Haaland has himself nine already. Carry on at this rate and he would obliterate all records.

One already went early doors on Wednesday night. No player has ever scored this many times in their first five Premier League appearances, Haaland beating the eight by Mick Quinn and a man named Sergio Aguero when plundering in his hat-trick seven minutes before half-time.

At that point, it was six goals in his last hour of football, having left this stadium to a standing ovation with a triple on Saturday as well. It took Aguero a few years to get himself a couple of match balls here. How many more could possibly follow for his successor? Plenty, you would imagine.

Nottingham Forest were beaten long before all that. It took Haaland three touches to finish this as a contest – his first to score the opener and the next two both involved in engineering the second. Three touches and that was that, midway through the first half. Thanks for coming.

And by the break, he had outscored 15 teams in the division. These are days that the City supporters, who Pep Guardiola has heavily praised for cranking up the volume over the past few weeks, must cherish. They usually have to patiently wait for their new signings to learn Guardiola’s way, to watch them moulded into superstars over a period of time. This guy just turned up as someone who believes they are the best in the world.

Despite later scoring his first two league goals for the club, poor Julian Alvarez – who had been bright and tenacious in the No 10 role – became something of a footnote.

For now it is all about the other one and quite what the rest of the league do with him is anybody’s guess. Haaland showed that he is too fast, too tall and his feet too quick for defenders. And better defenders than those lined up for Forest will find that out over the coming months.

As signings go, this is transformative for Guardiola and – amazingly, just a month into his City career and a month since some toyed with writing him off following the Community Shield – it is appearing difficult for the manager to find news way of describing how good the No 9 is.

What he does do is take the jeopardy out of these home matches against smart opposition. Forest were not bad, they pinched possession on occasion and turned it over menacingly, but were punished in a way not everybody has been here in recent years. Crystal Palace came across the exact same problem at the weekend.

Anyway, the goals. In the 12th minute, Phil Foden sat deep from a corner. He looked up and saw Haaland had made two different runs. Their telepathy is such that the timing was perfect and, although Foden’s cross deflected slightly off Morgan Gibbs-White, was always going to find his man. Joe Worrall could do nothing about Haaland’s dart and the Norwegian stabbed past Dean Henderson.

Henderson will not be particularly fond of the highlights for goal two, his lapse pass in the 23rd minute only finding Bernardo Silva and seconds later it was in the Manchester United loanee’s net. Haaland laid into Foden’s path and Neco Williams’ last-ditch tackle could only divert towards the striker. Empty net.

John Stones had seen a header disallowed for offside moments before Haaland had his third – during which Foden’s involvement was again key. Foden found Stones and the defender nodded it back where it came from, Haaland hanging in the six-yard box, nestled between men who might as well have been in different postcodes, and finished the job with his forehead.

Forest’s first shot on target, an effort by Gibbs-White, was enthusiastically celebrated by all four sides just before the hour and City had scored another by then. Joao Cancelo gathered a pass on the edge of Henderson’s box and curled it high into his top right-hand corner.

Alvarez had his double, slamming underneath Henderson with 25 minutes left and the other hammered flashing past the goalkeeper on 87 in a way Aguero would have been proud.

Haaland had departed the stage, to a high five and slap on the backside from his manager, and sat among the substitutes grinning with Foden, who pinched his ear as they laughed. Watching this, nobody else who fancies winning anything this year will be smiling.