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Jack Grealish needed that. It is not how he imagined his 13-month Manchester City goal drought would end – a penalty in an 8-0 FA Cup win over fourth-tier Salford City in a non-contest where a burgeoning youngster, James McAtee, netted a hat-trick – but a weight has been lifted off his shoulders nonetheless.
Despite Pep Guardiola making an uncharacteristic number of changes to his starting XI, City showed zero mercy, as they often do against lower-ranked opponents in cup competitions, with Grealish the beating heart of the champions’ attempts to rediscover their unrelenting streak that has helped them dominate English football for so long.
That is now 25 wins in a row for the champions against lower-ranked sides since they were burned in defeat to Wigan in the Callum McManaman FA Cup final shock to the system, with the aggregate scoreline now reading 96-8 in that time.
While it is Salford-born McAtee, who is slowly forcing his way into Guardiola’s thinking on a more regular basis, grabbing the headlines with his first City treble, Grealish’s goal and two assists from a free role in the team – where he made his name as a maverick forward at Aston Villa – shows there is life in the £100m man yet.
There was as much focus on who had made their way onto the pitch pre-match than those emblazoned in club colours later on.
Even given Salford’s depleted coaching numbers, the sight of Ryan Giggs, a supposed “director of football” in a club tracksuit alongside manager Karl Robinson, surveying the champions’ warm-up rituals will certainly leave an unsavoury taste in the eyes of some.
Giggs’ new-found omnipresence on the Salford bench overshadowed a day that, on paper, should have been one to remember for a club competing in the Northern Premier League Division One North, a now defunct league at level eight of the English football pyramid, a decade ago.
Not that the rest of the Class of 92, so often keen to tell you that beating teams in League Two means more to them than winning the treble with Manchester United, were all there to see it. Only Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt were in the stands at the Etihad, with Gary Neville preferring to go on a ski trip and David Beckham, who had been in Manchester earlier in the week, staying away.
Perhaps they had foreseen, using all their vast experience, the humbling experience that was to come.
When two of those City players coming in cost £150m between them, what chance did even a League Two team with six wins and six clean sheets in a row stand? Eight minutes in, after fine work from Matheus Nunes, Grealish waited for the perfect moment before releasing Jeremy Doku, with the out-of-favour winger slotting into the far corner to get the champions up and running.
Then it was the moment for the incoming youngsters to step forward. The impressive Nunes squared for Divin Mubama – a striker signed from West Ham in the summer who will almost certainly be the latest starlet City eventually make a profit on – to score his first goal for the club, effectively putting the tie to bed, before another more established fledgling talent, Nico O’Reilly, netted his first City strike before half-time.
Giggs remained deep in conversation with Alex Bruce, son of former team-mate Steve, and Robinson on the bench as the second half got underway. Quite what they were plotting, at this stage, is a mystery.
City soon added a fourth through Grealish from the penalty spot, his first since December 2023, after the struggling forward was felled, before McAtee got on the end of a Doku cross to add a fifth.
By the time Doku had stepped to make it six from the penalty spot, most in attendance had their minds elsewhere. McAtee’s seventh and eighth to complete his hat-trick had the Etihad doing the Poznan, with cries of “City are back” greeting the final whistle.
Grealish certainly played his part in the champions harking back to the days of no mercy football.
