Erling Haaland fires Man City to winning start but De Bruyne limps off at Burnley

It was really good. The first game is really important to se how our vibes and feelings are. It was tricky coming here. We created problems for ourselves but then the full-backs come outside everyone else inside and [we won the game].

[When faced with] man to man we have to play more direct and in the second half we did that. 

Erling scored two goals. There is no problem. He is happy. 

Unfortunately Kevin is injured again, the same position [his hamstring] he said to me. He needs to relax and recover. He was playing so well. Maybe [we shouldn’t have started him] but you can get injured in 15 minutes when [you come off the bench, too].

[Do your players still have the same hunger?] No doubt [steely glare]. 

Good to start again. It’s been two months without and it’s good to start with a win. We were q uite controlld to win. We’re still in a start phase of this marathon. Its about not stressing, relaxing and focusing on ourselves.

I have to keep working, keep relaxing and try not to focus too much on negative things. 

I don’t think [where to move] I just go there.

I’m developing my game. I try to do my best every day. I don’t know if there’s anyone better to work with than Pep as a young player. I’m still young remember and have to keep developing. There is more to come.

I think a lot of teams will go man to man this season. Bring it on. 

People forget fast in this game that we are Treble winners. 

An evening stroll for Man City with three clinical finishes, two from Haaland and one from Rodri who was as prominent as ever in controlling the game for the champions. Burnley showed glimpses of promise and the forward line linked up well at times. They’ll have far better days than this on and off the pitch where they are bound to be fined for the missile and the intruder.  

I think the Burnley fans are now complaining that the Premier League is ‘corrupt’. City’s answer with Blue Moon. 

Walker won’t be risked any longer.

McAtee ⇢ Walker. 

From the free-kick Laporte, I think, heads straight at Trafford. 

Zaroury is sent off as the crowd sings ‘F— V-A-R’ and gives him a hero’s round of applause. It was a rotten challenge. Deserved to go off. 

Var check for upgrading a yellow card to red for Zaroury who slid in and planted his studs into Walker’s calf. 

Six minutes of stoppage time are signalled which, given the five in the first half, will make this a 101-minute match.

Brownhill ⇢ Berge

Redmond ⇢ Foster. 

Akanji gives the ball to Foster inadvertently 30 yards out but, with the help of Rodri, he recovers to force Foster into the corner at the price of an, ahem, corner. 

Foden fades a left-foot shot around the right post and into the hoarding with a resounding slap. 

Another incident as someone comes out of the crowd behind the Burnley goal after Alvarez’s shot is saved. Three stewards pounce on him and pin him to the grass before he can get to any of the players. What is going on at Burnley? 

The police have arrested the person who threw a missile at Rico Lewis in the first half. 

Bruun Larsen meets the corner by splitting to the front post but steers his header high, wide and hideous. 

Benson embarks on a skittering run down the right to earn a corner when his cross is put behind by Gvardiol. 

Triple City substitution:

Laporte ⇢ Ake

Gvardiol ⇢ Lewis

Palmer ⇢ Haaland.

Burnley 0 Man City 3 (Rodri)  Free-kick on the left whipped in by Foden. Haaland misses it by a nose at the front post and Al Dakhil heads it towards the penalty spot. Ake has a swipe but can’t get there but in doing so blocks off a defender which allows it to fall to Rodri who leathers in a right-foot shot from about eight yards. 

Jordaan Beyer goes down with what looks like cramp and, after treatment, has to go off. 

Benson ⇢ Beyer.

That should mean a switch to a back four.

Guardiola was booked for dissent during the substitution. 

Foden tries the early ball into Haaland having sprinted between O’Shea and Al Dakhil. But he gets the angle slightly wrong and Haaland cannot reach it at the back post. 

Nothing comes from the corner and the referee lets the game continue with Burnley on the front foot rather than give the Clarets a free-kick for a City offside. When they eventually lose the ball and their momentum, the crowd, obviously cakeists, goes spare.  

Rodri, who has been as magnificent as ever, City’s key player as ever, gallops through the middle of the field and enters the penalty box, tacking right. Haaland wants the pass but can’t find any space as Rodri approaches him. In the end Rodri decides he has no option but to shoot but thumps it straight into the diligently covering Vitinho who turns it behind for a corner. 

Bruun Larsen,w ho had a spell at Anderlecht under Kompany, immediately wins a corner with his pressing and running but City defend it solidly. 

Twin Burnley changes:

Bruun Larsen ⇢ Amdouni

Zaroury ⇢ Koleosho.

At last Ederson spins a pass out to the right and Foden flicks it on to Haaland storming through the middle. He is faced up by Al Dakhil and O’Shea and when he has them close enough to be committed he slips a pass to his right for Alvarez. Beyer narrows the angle and forces the Argentina forward to hook his shot wide.  

Ederson has all the time he likes to walk out of his area and pick the passes he wants to play. Burnley are refusing to be drawn into his trap and stand off. 

City are stroking the ball around now at the back, Cigars are lit.

Rodri glides forward and thumps a shot that Trafford turns over. From the corner Rodri escapes his marker in the middle of the box to head low towards the bottom left. Trafford saves but he should have scored. 

O’Shea recovers after Bernardo plays an outside-in diagonal down the inside-left for Haaland. The centre-forward bustles past O’Shea who holds his line to force Haaland wide and then telescopes a leg out to block the shot, sending it behind for a corner. 

Good pass from Al Dakhi sends Foster racing down the left but he, too, runs out of gas against the roadrunner Walker. 

Foster and Vitinho get into a muddle when they had an overlap in the making, Foster misreading Vitinho’s run. Foden is now on the right and Bernardo on the left. 

Koleosho takes the ball on down the right, faces up Ake and runs at him, dropping shoulders to feint but he doesn’t have the beating of him with pure pace and Ake sticks close until Koleosho makes a mistake and taps the ball too far ahead fro him to regather in his stride. 

Haaland walks off complaining to Bernardo about passes that were not made. Guardiola walks over, puts his arm on him and offers some sharp words. And then pushes the intruding camera away. 

Burnley have shown glimpses of how they might prosper on their Premier League return but two lapses in marking have been cruelly exploited by the most heartless of finishers. 

Rodri misplaces a back pass when pressed by Doster and Amdouni but Ederson has time to recover to stop it rolling into the net. Kompany spreads his arms out wide in exasperation, as if he’s annoyed the press didn’t continue and encompass hounding the keeper, too.  

Burnley’s man-marking system at the back is being tested by City’s late runs. Foden almost breaks the offside trap by storming through the inside-right from deep on to a chip. But the flag eventually goes up after Trafford dives in to smother the ball. 

Five minutes of stoppage time have been signalled. City are hogging possession and have killed the party spirit of the home crowd. There’s a kind of sullen silence now. Or crestfallen silence. 

Lewis is pushed very high on the left and when City lose the ball, seldom though those times are, Rodri drops in at centre-half and Ake looks after the left side.  

What more can you say about Haaland? Barely involved until he needs to be. And then he explodes into life. 

Foster almost makes immediate amends when he meets Koleosho’s cross and smashes a shot towards goal that hits Akanji and goes out for a corner which comes to naught. 

Burnley 0 Man City 2 (Haaland)  Foster goes to sleep and lets Walker go beyond him down the right from a throw. He bombs to the byline and cuts it back to Alvarez. The World Cup-winner kills the pass with one foot then rolls it to Haaland to his right, 12 yards out and the centre-forward crashes a vicious, curling shot over Trafford and in off the underside of the bar. Clinical. 

Delightful skill from Foden to control a crisp pass from Kovacic on his heel and knock it up so he can spin on to it as he drives towards the six yard box. The ball skips off the turf a bit awkwardly and out comes Trafford to smother it in the nick of time. 

Beyer clears the cross when it comes and City have a throw on the right from which they begin to probe patiently again. 

Bernardo, now on the left, initiates a move of about 50 passes as the cry of ‘Boring, boring City’ echoes around Turf Moor. Up the field they go then switch wings by working it from front to back and upfield again. Burnley haven’t had a kick for about two minutes. 

Foster wins the ball from Kovacic on the left and hares towards the box, driving between Akanji and Walker to shoot across goal from an angle of about 45 degrees from the front post. 

Burnley are winning the ball back snappily and giving City a torrid time with the movement of their front three.  

Vital tackle from Rodri to drop between his centre-halves and stop Amdouni getting a shot away after the Burnley striker rolled his marker and was about to let fly from 16 yards. 

Sky shows that when Rico Lewis was lying down after being shoved over by Koleosho he was struck by a yellow cigarette lighter thrown by someone in the crowd. 

Bernardo takes De Bruyne’s position in central midfield and Kovacic starts further out wide on the right.  

Koleosho needlessly shoves Lewis over by the corner flag when Roberts had him penned by the byline. De Bruyne pulls up after the free-kicki and needs to go off. Kovacic is given instructions by Guardiola on a pad and there is quite an unnecessary delay. 

Kovacic ⇢ De Bruyne. 

Another slick move from Burnley ends with an angled shot from Amdouni from the left of the box, having wriggled away from Ake. Great work to make the space but then fires the shot too close to Ederson. 

Very tight offside call when City take a free-kick quick and De Bruyne chips it over the wall for Rodri’s clever run. He has only the keeper to beat with his header but Trafford does well to save to his right before the flag went up. Had it gone in, Var might have wanted a word with the linesman. 

Koleosho opens his body and sprays a 20-yard shot over the bar. Good move though. Koleosho began it with a run from right to left before poking a pass through to Foster. The South African centre-forward spotted Vitinho’s run down the left and played the perfect angled pass. The left-wing back shaped to shoot but instead cut it back to Koleosho who had to aim high to get it over the onrushing Walker but could not get it to dip down quick enough to trouble Ederson. 

De Bruyne sneaks over to the left and bends in a gorgeous cross with his left foot. Bernardo stoops to head it at the far post but Haaland throws out his right leg as he launches himself feet first and stands it wide. It would have been a far simpler finish for Bernardo had he seen or heard him. 

Burnley free-kick on the left. Cullen takes and floats it beyond the far post. Al Dakhil goes up but can’t divert it back on target. 

Penalty shout for Burnley when Akanji grabs Amdouni by the arm for a second or two as the Switzerland striker tried to latch on to a fizzed pass from Ederson that bounced off a defender. Var checks but decides the referee was right, Akanji let go in time and Amdouni made a meal of it. 

Burnley’s midfield melts away as De Bruyne advances and he thinks he might as well have a shot as the invitation is so blatant but he blazes it over. 

Burnley 0 Man City 1 (Haaland)  De Bruyne plays the corner back up the touchline to spark a one-two that puts him back in round the back. Rodri heads it back at the back post and Haaland sweeps in a left-foot shot on the volley with his instep just before that ball bounced, slotting it in from five yards. 

Ederson walks the ball forward to about two yards short of the centre circle then chips it long diagonally to the left. Beyer wins the header and pops it out for a throw. Bernardo slips De Bruyne in down the inside-right but O’Shea tracls over from the right side of the defence to put it out for a corner. 

Burnley kick off, both sides having taken the knee. They massively overload the left wing but then launch it right. They’re definitely playing three at the back in spite of Sky’s graphic showing four. Lewis is playing at left-back for City. 

Vincent Kompany is clutching something that looks like a clipboard but could well be a big notebook. 

It’s Rob Hawthorne, by the way. Not Peter Drury. 

Peter Drury has featured most prominently on the preview. Will he get the opening match? 

Have been resoundingly booed and whistled as they walked off after their warm-up, all of them insouciantly as if bemused by the level of Turf Moor’s hostility. 

Looks like they’ll be wearing their new away kit of white shirt and claret shorts in the house of claret. 

The former Texans and Cardinals defensive end has just ‘sacked’ Jamie Carragher after our columnist offered to play quarter-back in an onfield demo. Watt signed off his segment with a roar of ‘Up the Clarets’. 

Is Luca Koleosho, an 18-year-old,  US-born Italy U19 international who played U15s for USA and was also called up by Canada, signed from Espanyol in the summer. He also helped Italy win the U19 Euros this summer. 

We climbed the highest mountain but we area again at the bottom and there are a lot of stones. Last season is nice, our memories, but we have to start again.

We’ll take it one step at a time I hope [we] can get something out of this game, not just a result but a little bit of momentum, get a tackle in, a dribble, a shot, and build something hopefully special. I promise you one thing. This will be the worst Burnley performance of the season. 

Burnley  Trafford; O’Shea, Al Dakhil, Beyer; Roberts, Berge, Cullen, Vitinho; Koleosho, Amdouni, Foster. 
Substitutes Muric, Redmond, Bruun Larsen, Cork, Gudmundsson, Brownhill, Benson, Ekdal, Zaroury. 

Man City Ederson; Walker, Akanji, Ake, Lewi; De Bruyne, Rodri, Bernardo Silva; Alvarez, Foden; Haaland. 
Substitutes  Ortega, Phillips, Kovacic, Grealish, Laporte, Ortega, Gomez, Gvardiol, Palmer, McAtee. 

Referee Craig Pawson (South Yorkshire).

Ake comes in for Dias, Foden for Grealish, De Bruyne for Kovacic, Ederson for Ortega and Lewis for Stones:

Our first @premierleague team news of 2023/24 🙌

XI | Ederson, Walker, Akanji, Ake, Lewis, Rodrigo, De Bruyne (C), Bernardo, Foden, Alvarez, Haaland

SUBS | Ortega Moreno, Phillips, Kovacic, Grealish, Laporte, Gomez, Gvardiol, Palmer, McAtee#ManCity | @etihad pic.twitter.com/i3IF8qqZ7t

— Manchester City (@ManCity) August 11, 2023

Reunites Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville to tell us how great Pep Guardiola is. The problem is that there’s nothing new to say, or if there is, no one is saying it. 

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Pep Guardiola has insisted a repeat of last season’s historic Treble will be impossible for his Manchester City players, describing the achievement as “once in a lifetime” on the eve of the Premier League season.

City will start their title defence at Turf Moor on Friday evening, 62 days after they won the Champions League in Istanbul. Guardiola has managed to motivate his team after successes during the last seven years at the club but says replicating a European treble will be beyond his players.

“It will be impossible to do what we have done last season,” he said. “It’s once in a lifetime. I said to the players, “Forget about it, We climbed the highest mountain last season with what we have done.

“But the last two days training, we came down from the mountain and we start from the bottom. Everyone with the same intentions, there will be a lot, a lot of difficulties to climb the mountain as high as possible.

“Our football, our behaviours, our mentality will dictate how the season will be. In football, in sport, what we have done remains in our hearts and our minds, how nice it was, but it’s over.”

Guardiola has new signing Josko Gvardiol available to play in the Premier League curtain-raiser against the team managed by City legend Vincent Kompany. Kevin De Bruyne was fit to come off the bench in the Community Shield but was ahead of schedule in his comeback from the hamstring injury suffered in the Champions League final.

“We have to challenge ourselves, we have to push each other,” added Guardiola. “If people expect they are the only one who has to do it, it would not be possible. We start again, we’ll see. It’s 11 months, lets go step by step, recover who we are, compete like how we have done against Arsenal in the Community Shield. We are here, let’s go again. Summer is over let’s go again.” This job is short. Use every season like an opportunity.”

Meanwhile, City will have to make a decision on Cole Palmer, who scored at Wembley last week. Guardiola must weigh up regular football on loan for the England Under-21 forward, or for him to remain in the first-team squad.

“Today he’s with us. What’s going to happen? I don’t know. I understand completely he wants to be more active than the previous season, I understand that but Riyad (Mahrez) is gone. We will see. The last decision belongs to the club, not the players, not the agents. If you want to leave it’s OK but you have to deal with the club. The club have to decide – loan, transfer or stay here.”

Good evening and welcome to live coverage of the first match of the 2023-24 Premier League season, this one featuring the champions against the champions of the Championship, an enticing opening day match-up also in 2020 when Liverpool beat Leeds United 4-3. 

City, in the unusual position of announcing a fully fit squad, have signed Josko Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic having lost their captain, Ilkay Gundogan, to Barcelona on a free transfer and Riyad Mahrez, who scored 78 goals in 236 first team appearances for them, to the Saudi goldrush. Kovacic, a line-breaking dribbler, inherits Gundogan’s No8 shirt and is likely to take his starting place, at least at the start of the campaign.

Burnley won their title by 10 points last season, transformed from the attritional scrappers of their final two seasons under Sean Dyche, into one of the most attractive, stylish teams in the land. Vincent Kompany has lost three of his most influential players back to their parent clubs – Ian Maatsen, Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Nathan Tella – but has brought in Dara O’Shea from West Brom to partner Jordan Beyer at the back, James Trafford from City in goal, the 22-year-old Switzerland centre-forward Zeki Amdouni, who scored seven goals in Basel’s Conference League run last season, and Sander Berge from Sheffield United.

Today is no real test of Burnley’s potential. City can be slow starters but showed enough glimpses in the Charity Shield (sic) to suggest they have already found a fluency to create enough chances for Erling Haaland. Burnley play with enough width to trouble most sides, though Maatsen will be a big loss to them in that regard. Having stayed at Chelsea for pre-season in a seemingly successful bid to impress Mauricio Pochettino, he may become available on loan towards the end of the window, giving Burnley a chance to reintroduce the thrust he gave them.

Although they lost 6-0 in the FA Cup quarter-final against City on Kompany’s first competitive match against the club he captained with such distinction, they started with genuine brio and both Maatsen and Tella could have scored before Haaland seized the game in way only he can, making opponents look like Lilliputians. It should be closer tonight. City are irrepressible when they get going but, like all great sides, they tend to be the kings of spring rather than summer.