Man City vs Chelsea result: Champions hit new heights as Maurizio Sarri continues to fall short

Manchester City 6-0 Chelsea: Pep Guardiola's side took the Blues apart in an emphatic display of attacking football

The worry for the Premier League is that Manchester City are just getting started, and that has ensured the worry for Maurizio Sarri is that the end might now be near.

These were new depths even for Chelsea, as they suffered their worst defeat since 1991 and a 7-0 to Nottingham Forest with this 6-0 humiliation. These were new heights for City and the peerless Sergio Aguero, who became the club’s top scorer in the league with half their goals and another hat-trick. The champions have ended what had looked a hugely difficult week with the full nine points and the easiest of victories, the scale and nature of this embarrassment just putting more pressure and questions on Sarri.

This did feel another of those threshold moments for a Chelsea managerial tenure, and might well have been in the title race.

It was not just about the amount of goals City put past Kepa Arrizabalaga but how ravenous and focused they looked in doing so. After recent wobbles, they look so ruthlessly focused and like they can go on one of those winning runs that really make the difference in any title race.

To be 4-0 up after a mere 24 minutes was some statement, way before the brutal fact of beating one of the big six 6-0. And that was despite Aguero being responsible for one of the misses of the season, since he also put in one of the performances of the season.

He doesn’t just lead the way in their records, but led the way in the performance here, hassling and pressuring Chelsea’s hapless defenders into so many errors. Through making a mockery of their defence, the Argentine also made a mockery of that long-running feud with David Luiz. The Brazilian was yet again at the centre of another first-half team meltdown. It was his lax touch that led Raheem Sterling to hit the first goal of the game, but the conviction of the finish just distilled the intensity and ruthlessness of the City approach, and brought so many other problems for so many other Chelsea players.

This is what will be most galling for the Stamford Bridge hierarchy, and lead to much more direct questions than any of the broader arguments about philosophy. Whatever about learning “the most basic moves” and “primary foundations” of Sarri’s football, it here looked like Chelsea had forgotten the basics and primary foundations of defending. City were able to pull them all over the place with embarrassing ease, most notably for Sterling’s second and Aguero’s earlier miss. For that howler, Bernardo Silva was basically able to just run around their six-yard box with the ball to eventually get his cross in.

Remarkable as it sounds, it could have been even worse for Chelsea. That was certainly one of Aguero’s worst misses, but it is an illustration of his form at the moment that he just responded with something as good as anything you will see in the Premier League this season. The striker picked the ball up 25 yards of goal and just hammered it past Kepa.

If it was the sort of finish that defied words, how to explain the next two goals from a Chelsea perspective? How to explain Ross Barkley’s mindset as he headed the ball back towards his own goal and Aguero? How to explain Kepa’s weak hands for Ilkay Gundogan making it 4-0, especially when he was actually still responsible for so many fine saves?

Aguero proved far too much for Chelsea to deal with (Action Images via Reuters)

One brilliant stop from Gabriel Jesus prevented it getting to 7-0, the Brazilian having come on after Aguero finally completed his hat-trick with that penalty.

He of course went off to raucous cheers.

Whether Sarri now leaves to muted resignation will be one of the big questions of the week, but the feeling is it will still be decided by the entire of month of February. They do still have some big fixtures, and a League Cup final, although the idea of another match against City will now just fill them with dread rather than any hope about a trophy and the first silverware of Sarri’s career. There are other complicating factors, like the fact they have just backed him by breaking their over-30s policy to bring in his preferred striker in Gonzalo Higuain.

Aguero sealed his hat-trick in the second-half (Action Images via Reuters)

Really, though, there are by now also far bigger complications with this club than the manager. There are questions about their wider vision of what they want to be, something that they could take real lessons off from City.

The champions look like exactly what they want to be, and now look like they could go on what could be a daunting - and decisive - run.

This was certainly a daunting and decisive win. They go back on top, albeit with a game more played, but playing a game few will match.