Nobody left early. Nobody stopped singing. Nobody grizzled or grumbled or booed 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 getting spanked 6-0 by the quadruple champions. Equally, this is a result the rest of the Premier League will not thank them for.
Since Sammie Szmodics sensationally squeezed them ahead at the Etihad Stadium in August, Ipswich have now given up 10 unanswered goals to Manchester City in 173 minutes of football. And if that was partly stage fright, here they were more complicit: a collapse up there with their worst performances of the season, perhaps even playing an edgy City back into some kind of form.
Ipswich 0-6 Manchester City: Premier League reaction – as it happened
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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 range of opponents. They are still worryingly open at times, still occasionally liable to getting cut right through the middle. But this Pep Guardiola team does at least look like a Pep Guardiola team again.
More ominously, their big players are beginning to warm to the task. Kevin De Bruyne was quite bad for half an hour here, but buoyed by a slightly fortuitous assist 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 decade-long contract. Then you have Phil Foden.
