Foden double helps Manchester City beat Ipswich and return to top four | Premier League

No one left early. No one stopped singing. No one whined or grumbled or sulked or barracked. Ipswich have spent long enough out of this walled garden not to take its pleasures for granted, even if those pleasures occasionally include being thrashed 6-0 by the four-time champions. Likewise, this is a result that the rest of the Premier League will not thank them for.

Since Sammie Szmodic’s sensational push in front at the Etihad Stadium in August, Ipswich have now conceded 10 unanswered goals to Manchester City in 173 minutes of football. And if it was partly stage fright, here they were more complicit: a collapse up there with their worst performance of the season, perhaps even playing an edgy City back into some sort of form.

And – oh look – here they are back in the top four, a month unbeaten, clawing their way back to competence with 20 goals in 19 days of January, against an admittedly mixed array of opposition. They are still worryingly open at times, still occasionally prone to being cut right through the middle. But this Pep Guardiola team at least looks like a Pep Guardiola team again.

More ominously, their big players are starting to warm up to the task. Kevin De Bruyne was pretty poor for half an hour here, but buoyed by a slightly haphazard assist, he looked hungrier and sharper than at any point since his injury. Erling Haaland missed an early one-on-one but eventually celebrated the first goal bonus of his new year-long contract. Then you have Phil Foden.

How City missed that Big Phil Energy in the turbulent autumn period. How different they look now with him back in form, soaring beyond the edge of the penalty area, cutting in from the right, drifting and threatening. He scored the first goal, set up the second for Mateo Kovacic, scored the third.

The ever-dangerous Jérémy Doku added a fourth and Haaland a fifth before James McAtee brought the City bench to their feet with his first Premier League goal. For Ipswich, involved in a bruising clash with Brighton on Thursday night, their legs started to fail them late on, but their heads probably went much earlier. In the second half, after a series of simple mistakes in possession, they started openly arguing on the pitch.

It was smart of Guardiola to relentlessly attack Ipswich’s right flank, with Ben Johnson having a fierce battle with Doku and new signing Ben Godfrey alongside him clearly still on Serie A time. The first four goals all came from that side: Foden bundled home De Bruyne’s deflected cross, then set up Kovacic from 18 yards, then converted De Bruyne’s cut-back under Christian Walton’s spinning hands.

That was probably the moment Ipswich imploded. Up front, Liam Delap was still making trouble for himself as he writhed and struggled into clear air, but every time they lost the ball, Ipswich were vulnerable. Doku beautifully shuffled the ball in at the start of the second half while Johnson and Omari Hutchinson were still crying to each other over an earlier miscommunication.

Next it was Jack Clarke’s turn to make a mistake, spoiling a sharp performance with a suicidal sideways pass straight to Doku, who kindly slipped Haaland. “Ten more years,” chanted the City fans. Both coaches rolled on the substitutes after that and amid the half-tempo apathy of the denouement, McAtee finished the slaughter with a beautifully timed run and smart looping header.

Is City back? Paris in midweek will probably give us a better idea of ​​that. Is Ipswich done? Absolutely not. It was a terrible afternoon and Anfield next weekend is a devilishly difficult place to come back to. But they are still fighting, still trustworthy, still united. Nobody expects them to be here next season. But then no one expected them to breathe this air in the first place.