Manchester City back to their best in comfortable Champions League win over Marseille

Olympique Marseille 0-3 Manchester City: Guardiola's side ensured that they would take maximum points from their first two games in Group C

Manchester City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan (AFP via Getty Images)

That’s more like it. Manchester City have not always looked themselves of late but returned to winning ways and something approaching their very best in a dominant and comfortable 3-0 victory away to Olympique Marseille in the Champions League group stages.

Pep Guardiola's side always looked likely to take maximum points from their first two games in Group C once Ferran Torres capitalised on their early pressure to make the breakthrough, turning in Kevin De Bruyne’s cross after a costly mistake by Valentin Rongier.

Torres and Phil Foden - both just 20-years-old - ran the show as City put Saturday’s disappointing draw at West Ham and an indifferent start to the domestic season behind them. Ilkay Gundogan and Raheem Sterling’s second half goals at the Stade Velodrome mean that progression to the knock-out stages already appears to be a formality.

Marseille struggled to lay a glove on their guests and though Andre Villas-Boas is a great admirer of Guardiola, he could only set his team up to defend deep and break at speed. Save for a spell at the end of the first half and the start of the second, it did not work. City cut through the Ligue 1 side with the type of attacking verve that they have sorely lacked at times at the start of this season.

City’s recent struggles to create chances felt like a thing of the past in the opening stages as Guardiola’s players began with a brilliant, irrepressible intensity. Marseille could not cope with the speed of their movement or the fury of their pressing, which hemmed Villas-Boas’ side deep in their own half. The edge of the hosts’ penalty area was a pressure cooker and it would not be long before one of Marseille’s number succumbed to the heat.

Rongier was the unfortunate victim. The midfielder slumped slightly as he realised he had misplaced a pass across the face of his own box. It was a couple of yards too far in front of his team-mate Duje Ćaleta-Car but right onto the boot of Kevin De Bruyne, who only had to play a low, first-time cross to the far post for Torres to tap in. After scoring against Porto last week, the £20.9m summer signing already has three goals in seven appearances.

Torres could have had another later in the half when yet more relentless City pressure allowed him to knick the ball away from Caleta-Car inside Marseille’s area. Instead, he allowed Oleksandr Zinchenko to follow-up with a strike that clipped the outside of the far post. City deserved to go into the break with a second, such was their dominance, but still somehow ended the half with just two shots on target.

There was still a game to win. City were reminded of that fact at the start of the second half when Florian Thauvin - a World Cup winner, who you may otherwise remember from a barren spell in front of goal at Newcastle United - was allowed to let fly from distance. Ederson misjudged the strike, allowing it to hit his hand before bouncing clear and out for a corner off the upright.

Marseille, to their credit, had weathered City’s storm by that point. Guardiola’s side were still not creating a great deal and had lost their early intensity. Perhaps that is understandable given their lead, their likelihood of progression from Group C and the unique demands that this most compressed and compacted of seasons is making of players. But the longer they waited for a two-goal cushion, the more Marseille would grow confidence.

Any hope of Villas-Boas’ side ending a 10-game losing streak at this level expired, however, with Gundogan’s goal. The midfielder owed everything to Phil Foden, who dropped his shoulder to deceive Leonardo Balerdi and run onto Aymeric Laporte’s sublime through pass. Sterling’s header down at the far post back across the face of goal eliminated the remaining Marseille defenders, allowing Gundogan to finish.

The third goal was even better. It was straight from the playbook of those Premier League title-winning campaigns - a delightful slide pass down the line by Riyad Mahrez, a laser-like low cross to the six-yard box by De Bruyne and a simple finish from close range by Sterling. If the hope is that this win marks a return to form for City, then they rounded the evening off with a most compelling piece of evidence.