Pep Guardiola described his players the other night as ‘supermen’. It is a slight twist on the theme that he had spent the previous few hours on the touchline resembling a hopping-mad Lex Luthor as one plot after another came up short against Bournemouth.
But a win is a win at this stage in the season and sometimes, to an artistic mastermind such as Guardiola, there is deeper satisfaction when Manchester City achieve victory through grind and good fortune rather than beauty and design. Saturday sat well within that category.
Guardiola went to great lengths in his assessment to describe the scheduling burden on his men and the numbers back his view.