Bernardo Silva: Amid the lethargy of a third Man City-Tottenham instalment, one man stood alone

When the noon-day heat is on, and tempers are flaring, this is the sort of game that Bernardo Silva loves best of all: 5ft 8in of pure bad intentions

Final instalments in a trilogy are rarely as entertaining as the first two. Think The Godfather. Toy Story. Theresa May’s meaningful vote. And so, even if the third part of Manchester City vs Tottenham occasionally threatened to produce the high drama of its predecessors, you suspect it will be the least well-remembered of the three, noteworthy more for its jagged edge than for its persistent excellence.

Partly, you suspect, it was the inevitable emotional crash of Wednesday night, the throbbing comedown after an ill-advised midweek blowout. Partly it was the familiarity of the tropes, of the storylines, of the protagonists, which in the case of these two sides had bred a sort of cabin fever. What do you say in a team meeting ahead of a third game against the same opposition in 11 days? Perhaps a certain ennui had set in by this point, a lethargic torpor, which is another way of saying these two were pretty much sick of the sight of each other.

And so what they lacked in fresh legs and fresh tactics they made up in a sort of chafing rage. Davinson Sanchez grappled angrily with Kevin De Bruyne. Raheem Sterling piled into his defensive work with all the coiled compulsion of a man on one per cent phone battery. The two sets of fans goaded each other with chants of “VAR” (on the Tottenham side) and “you’re f---ing s---” (on the City side), which suggested the well of fresh songs had long since run dry too.

But amid the scruffy blocks and irritable challenges, one man stood alone, the sap rising in tandem with the temperature, the most comfortable player on the pitch. For, when the noon-day heat is on, and tempers are flaring, this is the sort of game that Bernardo Silva loves best of all.

On a day when few were at their best, Bernardo was supreme: a pork steak in a world of disappointing crudites. It wasn’t just his sumptuous ball to set up the game’s decisive goal. It was the relentless, malevolent energy he brought to the game, that combination of velvet and vitriol that seems to capture Guardiola’s City team at its best. Like a suave mob boss, Bernardo has a plethora of ways in which to beat you, and not all of them are strictly legal.

With the ball at his feet, he’s a typhoon: dipping, swerving, but somehow always in a hurry. As many times as he finessed the ball past Ben Davies on the Tottenham left, perhaps more striking was how he seemed to lose the ball only to emerge with it a couple of seconds later: some mixture of quick feet and quick wits that is often just as effective as a four-star Fifa skill move. You know he’s cutting in on his favoured left foot. You just don’t know when, how, how quickly or what he’ll mutter at you in Portuguese on the way past.

Then there’s the delivery: measured, delicate and yet with its own latent, skimming menace. There’s not the same curl and flight to a Bernardo cross that there is with, say, De Bruyne. A Bernardo cross comes with fangs, venom and a folded leaflet detailing potential side effects. It was this sort of cross from which Sergio Aguero unselfishly nodded across goal to tee up Phil Foden for the final flourish.

Then there’s Bernardo himself: 5ft 8in of pure bad intentions. As an opponent, he doesn’t just play on your speed and your reflexes, he plays on your temperament. He wants you to leave the pitch despising him. There was the aggressive body check he gave Christian Eriksen early in the game as he went to pick up the ball for a free-kick. A late swipe at Danny Rose on the left wing after the whistle. And few players in world football have perfected like Bernardo the art of picking up the ball and marching towards the referee with it, wagging a finger with one hand, fending off opponents with the other.

Perhaps, as City’s season sharpens to a fine point, it was always going to end up like this: as a test of brawn, of nerve, of red cells. “Don’t think too much,” Guardiola urged his team earlier this month, when City were blissfully cruising, the quadruple still on. That was before Fernando Llorente’s hip and the machinations of VAR crushed their dreams of immortality on Wednesday night. You can’t stitch up a heart that’s been broken. All you can do – all City could do here – is let the blood flow.

City should still win the title. Not because of the righteous anger or the vengefulness in their souls, but because they remain ahead in the table with marginally the best squad. This was a monumental test for them, and though De Bruyne’s injury will give them pause, the emergence of peak Bernardo – their ticking pulse, their bulging vein, their little whirlwind – could scarcely have come at a better time for them.