Erling Haaland continued his Premier League assault with a second consecutive hat-trick for Manchester City in a 6-0 win over Nottingham Forest.
The 22-year-old scored three goals in 26 minutes against Forest, just four days after doing the same against Crystal Palace.
He is now the first player in Premier League history to score nine goals in his first five games, and Andy Cole and Alan Shearer’s record of 34 goals in a season will almost certainly be broken this season.
This was also the story of another new City striker, Julian Alvarez, who scored twice after the break in his first Premier League start, with Joao Cancelo also scoring.The thrashing increased City’s goal total to 19 in five games, highlighting how difficult they will be to stop this season.
Forest, who have shown enough this season to suggest that their return to the top flight will not be fleeting, will be happy to get this game out of the way early and will look forward to Saturday’s clash with Bournemouth far more. He needed only 12 minutes to break the deadlock as he showed a brilliant instinct to get in front of Joe Worrall at the near post and stab Phil Foden’s cross past Dean Henderson.