Man City 1 Southampton 0: Champions go top of Premier League table but made to work hard against struggling Saints

REACHING for the stars one minute, plonked on his backside the next – and ball in the back of the net on both occasions.

Welcome to the goals-are-us world of Erling Haaland. One where, however they’re teed up, the Striking Viking will knock ‘em in.

On Wednesday with that incredible stretching kung fu seven-foot-in-the-air finish backheel volley as City cruised past Sparta Prague.

And this time when he was all but sitting on the Etihad turf when he stuck out his boot to turn Matheus Nunes’ cross in for the fourth-minute winner which proved the difference.

More a drip than the avalanche everyone expected, yet still enough to see off Saints and send the champions back to the table. With reputation intact for the beaten, as well.

And you wouldn’t have expected that after only five minutes, when mission improbable became mission nigh on bloody impossible, either.

That’s how long it took City to get their opener and put them in the rarified position of scoring first. After winning 13 points from behind already this term, not one they’re used to.

Never a hint of that here, mind – chalk it down as another Guardiola masterstroke, as yet another manager paid the price for trying to follow the Spaniard’s lead of playing from the back.

All well and good when you’ve got the vast array of talent at your disposal like the City manager. Not so easy for most of the others, though.

The ones who would be best served playing to their strengths and clearing their lines, rather than attempting to stroke it around like backline Galacticos.

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The chin strokers will, of course, be outraged at the suggestion. And Southampton chief Russell Martin continues to stick to his guns and demand his side take that approach.

All very commendable, for sure. Yet also the root cause of that early opener…and so nearly at least three others beyond it, too.

More of those shortly. First that error in handing over possession as Saints tiki-taka’d across the backline…before Aaron Ramsdale hurriedly hacked into touch under pressure.

From the throw-in Nunes crossed from the left and Haaland shrugged off Jan Bednarek’s neither-one-thing-nor-the-other attempt at defending to score from six yards.

Bednarek had a half-hearted grab, a similar shove and even weaker effort to tackle. Haaland merely stuck out a foot, virtually on his backside by the time he did, and that was that.

Pretty much that was that as a contest, too, you felt. Especially with City all but camped in the opposition half and the Saints – for all their pretty patterns – posing little threat.

And oh-so-close to coughing up more goals through their determination to play their way out of trouble at the back. Each time they merely played their way into it.

It was Tyler Dibling losing out to Savinho, and then breathing a sigh of relief when the Brazilian dithered instead of picking out Haaland on the left of the box.

Then Flynn Downes twice gave it away deep in his own territory, and finally keeper Ramsdale was thanking Taylor Harwood Bellis after only finding Bernardo Silva.

Still, only a matter of time before the dam burst, thought everyone. Only a matter of time before City cut loose and the goal difference goes into overdrive.

Then again, maybe not. For bang on half-time they so nearly got the slap-in-the-chops alarm call of what can happen if you don’t make the most of all that possession, all those chances.

The Jack Stephens pass which sent Cameron Archer scooting clear on halfway was more of a stretched-leg prod, yet that was exactly the reason City were caught on the back foot.

It meant Archer ran unopposed, save for the never-catching-him Manuel Akanji, only to blast his effort against the crossbar. The one – and only – that got away.

A gaffe which was inches away from looking even more costly 22 seconds after the break, when Phil Foden fizzed a low shot wide after a red arrows-style attack.

But then, wonder of wonders, the unthinkable happened. Haaland somehow stuck one wide from barely a yard out when Savinho dinked the cutest of balls to the far post.

Savinho to Haaland was something a running theme throughout the afternoon, in fact, because twice more he picked him out in the box.

On both occasions Taylor Harwood-Bellis was the Saints’ saviour, turning one header away and grabbing Haaland’s arm long enough to deny him an angle to finish the second time.

Jack Stephens got in on the act by nodding an earlier Haaland header – this one from Foden’s corner – off the line, and STILL the lead remained that solitary goal.

It would have been cancelled out altogether, too, had Southampton made the most of a three-on-two raid. And they really, really should have done.

Instead Adam Armstrong blazed over and it petered out into nothing. A fitting epitaph for this game, in fact.