Guardiola built this Manchester City team and knows he could lose it all | Jonathan Wilson

With the independent commission to come and Arsenal up next, beating Aston Villa didn’t really seem like the major issue

A white sky almost entirely leached of colour. A damp bite to the air. A general sense of unease around the Etihad. Could the last decade of Manchester City success be erased or tainted by an independent panel hearing the charges brought by the Premier League? Quite possibly, but in the here and now, after a straightforward win over Aston Villa, City will go top of the Premier League if they beat Arsenal at the Emirates on Wednesday.

Even in the wake of last Monday’s Premier League charges, it would be difficult to portray this as a defiant victory, a club under siege coming together in adversity. City were so superior, and so helped by Villa’s errors, that there was no immediate opponent to be defiant against.