28 min Everton win their first corner. It’s headed away to Gueye, who swishes a half-volley from about 23 yards. Ortega jumps to make a comfortable save.

26 min Foden puts Haaland through again, this time with a pinged pass from inside his own half. Haaland gets away from Branthwaite but Pickford is quickly out to dive at his feet and claim the ball. Good goalkeeping.

23 min I’m fairly sure, having seen a couple of replays, that City’s opener was an own-goal by Branthwaite. At the moment it has Bernardo Silva’s name next to it. Why I oughta.

22 min Foden plays a nice through pass to Haaland, who goes round the outrushing Pickford but forces himself too wide. He can only cut the ball back into the six-yard box and Branthwaite concedes a corner.

Kudos to Haaland there; he could easily have bought a penalty (or tried to) when Pickford dived at his feet.

21 min A promising Everton attack, only their second of the game, ends with Mangala curling not far wide from 25 yards. Decent effort, and it was noticeable that Everton had plenty of time on the ball throughout that move.

18 min The atmosphere is still very flat despite that goal, which was greeted – as the great Clive Tyldesley noted on Amazon – more with relief than joy. I guess 12.30pm games can be flat at the best of the times, never mind when most of the supporters are nursing a bruiser between the eyes.

Doku crackled inside from the left and angled a good pass behind Tarkowski towards Bernardo Silva. He made a late run into the area, tracked by Branthwaite, and tried to slide a low shot across goal from a tight angle. It deflected off the sliding Branthwaite before spinning across Pickford and into the far corner.

The goal has provisionally been given to Bernardo but I’m not sure his shot was on target – I guess we’ll find out when we see more replays at half-time.

GOAL! Man City 1-0 Everton (Branthwaite own goal 14)

13 min “I know it won’t make for the best MBM experience,” begins Joe Pearson, “but I hope this turns out to be the most Dyche match of all: tedious and pedestrian and ending in a nil-nil draw. Happy Boxing Day!”

So far so, er, good.

12 min Haaland has a shot blocked after more good play from Savinho, who has been City’s most penetrative and fearless attacker to date.

11 min Here, this is good fun.

9 min Everton, more than most teams, take pride in their defending, and the early signs are that this will be another proud day for them. They know they have can keep clean sheets against the best, having done so against Arsenal and Chelsea in the last fortnight; that thought should sustain them during the inevitable periods of suffering.

6 min Everton’s first attack. Harrison curls a nice inswinging cross that just evades Calvert-Lewin, nipping in front of Ake. He would still have had a lot to do even if he had made contact with the ball, which he didn’t.

4 min Savinho, who has started sharply on the right, wriggles past a couple of defenders and drives a low shot straight at Pickford. There was a player sliding in front of Pickford, which could have put him off, but he kept his eye on the ball.

3 min: Gvardiol hits the post! City’s primary goal threat almost strikes. Foden took a short corner on the left and then clipped a nice cross to the near post, where Gvardiol rose between two defenders thumped a header off the face of the post.

2 min “I’m hug,” writes Amanda Knight. That’s it, that’s the whole message. Has another development in vibes culture that’s passed me by?

1 min Everton, in their dark grey change strip, kick off from right to left.

“Fresh off a silly early start with the cricket, how are the exhaustion levels, Rob?” wonders Matt Dony. “Can we expect some tiredness-induced delusional entries? Like, I don’t know, City struggling to play coherently and score goals, despite having A comedy goal machine up front? Or maybe, Everton being solid and difficult to play against? All seems pretty outlandish…”

I wonder how long you could get away with making the whole thing up. I remember being in an English lesson when England played Albania on a Wednesday afternoon in March 1989. Some lad claimed to have a radio under his desk, so we were all thrilled when word went round that England had taken an early lead. When they made it 4-0 after seven minutes we started to doubt the reliability of our intrepid reporter.

A reminder of the teams

Manchester City (possible 4-3-3) Ortega Moreno; Lewis, Akanji, Ake, Gvardiol; Foden, Kovacic, Bernardo; Savinho, Haaland, Doku.
Substitutes: Carson, Brits, De Bruyne, Gundogan, Simpson-Pusey, Mubama, Alleyne, O’Reilly, McAtee

Everton (possible 4-2-3-1) Pickford; Coleman, Tarkowski, Branthwaite, Mykolenko; Mangala, Gueye; Harrison, Doucoure, Ndiaye; Calvert-Lewin.
Substitutes: Virginia, Patterson, Keane, Beto, O’Brien, Chermiti, Broja, Lindstrom, Armstrong

Referee Simon Hooper.

“LFC failed to score against the Evo cos the game never happened,” writes Jon Dry. “Just sayin…”

Did they score a goal, yes or no?

Pep Guardiola on Manchester City’s new world

“Is Seamus Coleman replacing Ashley Cole in a starting line up a candidate for oldest ever combined age for such a switch?” wonders Nick Smith. “Free sherry for anyone who can come up with an older outfield pairing.”

Ashley Cole? Are you sure there’s any sherry left? It’s a good question, though: Seamus Coleman (36) and Ashley Young (39) have a combined age of 75. As with most age-based questions, the answer probably involves Stanley Matthews or Kazuyoshi Miura.

Sean Dyche is one step away from using the V-word here. The day he starts talking about vibes is the day we know it’s over.

Pep Guardiola takes to Amazon

[How do you find your rhythm again?] I don’t know. Winning games, basically. We can’t think beyond the next game; we are going to try.

I love the club, the hierarchy and the people, my life in Manchester. We have a lot of problems, for many reasons and the target is to turn it round.

When we won everything in the past we had almost a full squad. Now we have eight important players out. When they come back they have to straight in the team, and with one game every three days they get injured again. We are in a cycle that we can’t get out of.

Kyle is unwell, Kevin and Gundogan [who are on the bench] have had flu the last few days, Jack [Grealish] is injured. Football is unpredictable. When you think, ‘Oh it’s going to be difficult’, maybe our form will change.

[On the transfer window] If we can we have to add players, definitely. Saying that, I don’t know if it will happen because the winter transfer window is not easy.

Stats department City have won 14 and drawon of their last 15 games against Everton, so there’s that.

Barney Ronay on City’s astonishing collapse

There is no obvious explanation for any of this. A team that were all aura, that carried their presence before them like a lance have become an anti-presence, stuffed shirts, straw men.

As ever the explanations tend to divide into the macro and micro view of history. Details will always decide a game. But we remain addicted to our sweeping narratives. So the more hard-headed analysis says: take the Ballon d’Or winner out of any team, chuck in one or two key defensive injuries, and there will of course be a drop-off.

Team news

Preamble