CLASS

It’s child’s play for Silva as stylish City silence Jose jibes with SIXY football

PEP GUARDIOLA hit back at Jose Mourinho as Manchester City showed their class with an emphatic statement of title intent.

City produced the perfect response to Mourinho who had accused the champions of lacking class because he felt he had been disrespected

IT was hard to gauge which standing ovation was the more tumultuous, the more appreciative.

The one for David Silva after a performance delicious even by his own exquisite standards or the one for Sergio Aguero after another three-pronged reminder of why he remains one of the Premier League’s underrated, all-time great strikers. No wonder Pep gave his peerless poacher a peck (left). In just over two years, Guardiola has surely come to appreciate fully the brilliance and the bravura of two talismen small in stature but towering in talent. He has surely come to appreciate them as much as those who have been treated to their excellence here since the beginning of the decade. Guardiola’s riveting revolution might dominate English football’s psyche but these guys were nudging up the bar when their coach was making his managerial name in the Nou Camp. While City supporters celebrate what is being constructed in this era, the old guard still provides the foundation of this magnificent building project. Not that age is stalking the skills of Sergio, only recently turned 30 and Silva, 33 next January. This was as easy a victory as you could imagine: Champions 6, Cones 1.

Yet it was still fundamentally reliant on the contributions of Silva and Aguero.

For the opener, Ederson’s fizzing goal-kick was an ingenious, wellexecuted assist but Aguero still had to have the calmness of thought to check back and chip over Ben Hamer.

And after Gabriel Jesus had found an inviting near-post gap for the second, it was Aguero who reacted sharpest to the hapless Hamer’s spillage for City’s third.

By that point, any vague thoughts of any sort of contest had long disappeared and were not even retrieved when Jon Gorenc Stankovic prodded in the unlikeliest of Huddersfield goals just before half-time. The second half remained a glorified training exercise, highlighted by Aguero’s volleyed flick for his ninth Premier League hattrick and a Leroy Sane run that ended with a Terence Kongolo own goal. They were City’s fifth and sixth but it was the fourth that captured the Etihad’s imagination, that brought a teary eye or two to the players’ families area.

Silva’s display could actually have been seen as routine – in that his routine his sublime – but he tacked a star to it with a hit from a free-kick that was as coaxed as it was cracked, as persuaded as it was pinged.

Up in the stands, his son Mateo was being cradled by mother Jessica just as father David had cradled him as the teams lined up ahead of the game.

Mateo was born in December, almost four months premature, and Silva and his family endured a five-month ordeal until they were sure he would pull through.

Guardiola spoke after the game about how special it was for Silva to score in the first game at which his son was present, just as he spoke movingly about Silva’s agonies in the documentary All or Nothing. It was a touch of, yes, class.

How much of that City have off the field is all down to opinion, and we all know Jose’s. What is indisputable is they have plenty on it. And none is classier than David Silva and Sergio Aguero.