Maybe that was good. Maybe that was progress. Maybe that was the start of a beautiful friendship between Chelsea and Enzo Maresca .
Maybe Manchester City are inevitable and Erling Haaland was always going to score. Maybe this is what £1.3bn is supposed to buy you.
Or maybe Mateo Kovacic (£30m, bought from Chelsea) pushing past Enzo Fernandez (£105m) like he was made of dandelion fluff en route to scoring represents some deeper problem. Maybe Raheem Sterling , who scored in both Premier League matches against City under Mauricio Pochettino , might have been more use were he not engaged in a proxy slanging match with the club having not been selected. Maybe Marc Cucurella should not have spent his summer reciting a kitschy chant about him leaving Haaland “trembling” to anyone who would listen.
Food for thought, and Cucurella will likely spend much of the next week thinking about Haaland running through him. These 90 minutes sparked far more questions than answers. Perhaps the most pressing surrounded Fernandez’s myriad roles at Chelsea.
Read Next Man City humble Chelsea to show Enzo Maresca the true enormity of his task Having spent much of the summer under investigation after broadcasting himself singing a racist and transphobic song to his 11.3m Instagram followers – not textbook leadership behaviour – the 23-year-old was named captain. Is this the gleaming standard Maresca hopes to set? That forgiveness is only ever an apology and a sizeable charitable donation .