It is not criticism of any team to rely on their central striker for the majority of their goals. As Roy Keane would be at pains to opine, it’s his job.

Yet if there was one running theme from Pep Guardiola’s final few years, something that would have pained the forefather of tiki-taka himself: Manchester City have been a little too dependent on Erling Haaland.

Others weighed in with their share of the goals, but every attack still felt geared around getting a forward into position to find Haaland.

This season, with a new-look squad shaping up nicely, eerily quickly after losing so many stellar names in recent years, the potency levels around the Etihad feel an altogether more daunting proposition.

City’s thrilling 5-3 victory over Sunderland means they go into the first international break, after their most tumultuous close season in a decade, having won five out of five league games for the first time since 2017.

Trying to match Arsenal for physicality and sheer resilience at the back is almost futile. Instead, Enzo Maresca has created an attack with goals coming from all angles. And with Haaland still at the forefront of everything, a division that thinks it has worked City out better think again.

From the outset, despite Sunderland coming into the match with a xG performance only slightly better than Tottenham’s, it was clear this was going to be fun.

Nilson Angulo had already missed a golden chance to put Sunderland in front before Enzo Fernandez arrowed in a sublime, cloak-and-dagger free-kick into the net from the tightest of angles. Quite the way to open his City account.

That lead lasted three minutes as Brian Brobbey started an afternoon he will never forget, levelling on the end of a sumptuous Enzo Le Fee pass, before Rayan Cherki slammed the hosts back in front.

Le Fee was instrumental in another quick-fire Brobbey equaliser, but City again remained undeterred down the other end, the Etihad juggernaut breathing fire at every opportunity, storming into a 4-2 lead through a double from Antoine Semenyo, either side of the break.

Haaland continued to toil in the second half against the only Premier League team he was yet to score against since the Norse phenom arrived on our shores. Brobbey had no such struggles, sealing Sunderland’s first Premier League hat-trick in a decade and setting up a nervy finish for a City backline with some long, hard thinking to do over the international break.

What will be weighing heavily on Maresca’s mind in his City Football Academy office in the coming weeks is how he is going to restructure his new-look midfield.

His gung-ho attacking approach serves great purpose down one end, but leaving Elliot Anderson as the only remotely defensive-minded midfield option to protect the City rearguard is churlish in the extreme.

Maresca started the season more conservatively, with Nico O’Reilly alongside Anderson, but has since deployed Fernandez in a two, with Cherki in behind Haaland. Fernandez is not a long-term solution in the double pivot.

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The question is, when you have that much firepower going forward, does it really matter? Haaland finished off the thrilling victory to complete his Premier League set late on, on the end of a pinpoint cross from Jeremy Doku. Another example of City’s frightening strength in depth.

Semenyo, Jeremy Doku, Ilman Ndiaye, Cherki and Fernandez. All behind Erling Haaland at one point or another in one match. Phwoar.

If Arsenal wrestled the rest into submission with their attritional football last year, should City go all the way this time around, it will be in a more swashbuckling manner altogether.