Manchester City 5 // Sunderland 0
MANCHESTER // Ignore the small matter of the comeback that may have effectively clinched the title for Manchester United and this has been a near-perfect match week for Manchester City.
Excellent as they were expansive, exuberant as they were exciting, they recorded their biggest league win for exactly a year.
The ironic chorus of "boring, boring City" rang around Eastlands; this is the sort of tedium they would settle for on a regular basis.
Moreover, if their immediate concern was shoring up their place in the Premier League's top four, it has been achieved. While Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur all drew, City surged to victory against Sunderland, reclaimed third place and established a six-point cushion over Spurs in fifth, having played a game more.
They have a vastly better goal difference, too, as the supposedly defensive-minded side came over all cavalier, a bolder team providing a brighter performance.
With Adam Johnson, the England winger, marking his return from injury with a well-taken goal, Carlos Tevez ending the longest drought of his City career - seven matches - and David Silva and Yaya Toure scoring crisply, positives abounded.
The tired team that laboured manfully at Chelsea a fortnight before appeared transformed, the side who seemed fatigued now refreshed by the international break.
Even a supposedly negative move, introducing Patrick Vieira for Johnson, proved progressive, with the Frenchman's first touch providing City's fourth goal. There was a change in emphasis, with an added attacker included at the expense of the benched Gareth Barry.
City can be criticised for starting slowly, but not on this occasion. They boasted a two-goal lead within a quarter of an hour.
Game over, effectively, especially as Sunderland have struggled to score since the January sale of Darren Bent. Nevertheless, City embellished their win with three more goals.
Johnson struck first, exchanging passes with Toure and veering in from the touchline to collect the Ivorian's pass, before drilling in a shot at the near post.
For a former Sunderland loan player, Johnson displays a potent ingratitude: this early strike followed an injury-time equaliser against his old employers last season.
Then Silva lofted a pass over the Sunderland defence and Tevez gave chase, finding space between John Mensah and Phil Bardsley before being upended by the latter. The subsequent penalty went in via Simon Mignolet's left hand and the inside of the post.
Tevez's commitment is a constant, but he had seemed to have run himself into the ground during a crowded winter programme.
After 17 days without a game, his ability to sprint away from defenders has returned: for the third goal, he met Nigel de Jong's perceptive pass to square the ball for Mario Balotelli. When the Italian's shot was blocked, Silva responded by converting the rebound.
The goals kept coming, Vieira arriving and sliding to meet Aleksandar Kolarov's drilled cross with an effort that crossed the line before the despairing Mignolet clawed it back.
Not for the first time, Mignolet merited sympathy. He could not be faulted for the fifth, either, Toure anticipating Lee Cattermole's dreadful cross-field pass and finishing adeptly. The rout was complete.
