August 21, (THEWILL) – The most expensive player in the English Premier League Jack Grealish was among the scorers as League champions Manchester City brushed aside league returnees Norwich City 5-0 on Saturday to get their title defense back on track for the season.
It came after the opening day’s 1-0 loss to Tottenham Hotspur where they failed to create chances for themselves and Son Heung-min capitalised to score and give Spurs’ Nuno Espirito Santo a winning start to his management at the north London side.
They had no such troubles against their newly promoted opponents at the Etihad Stadium.
Grealish, whose performance was defended after that loss by manager Pep Guardiola, scored in an unconventional manner 22 minutes into his home debut.
It was the second goal for the champions after Norwich’s goalkeeper Tim Krul gave City the lead with an unfortunate own goal to earn the unenviable record as the first goalkeeper to get on the scoresheet against his own team for the 2021/2022 campaign.
City returned from the break on that two goal advantage and it stayed that way until the final half hour of the encounter when Aymeric Laporte made it three. Thereafter, Pep Guardiola’s substitutes Raheem Sterling and Riyad Mahrez entered their names on the scoresheet to take the final score to five.
It was extra misery for Norwich and a savage welcome by the champions for the Canaries in their second successive defeat on their return to the top flight of English football. It was never going to be different given the gulf in class between the two sides.
Statistically, City had won their previous three home league games against Norwich by an aggregate score of 14-1 in the mostly one-sided head-to-head between the two sides.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
