Not the scoreline we hoped for, but certainly one we feared. Not a great deal to discuss really, we were soundly beaten by a side who are clearly superior in every single position. We’ve now lost our unbeaten status. Not unexpectedly.

Mario Balotelli opened the scoring by leaping on the opportunity to pull a bicycle kick out of his toolbox, scoring from six yards. That was the only goal of the first half, but although we had created the same number of chances by the break, City’s 68% possession told the real story of the first 45 minutes.

Adam Johnson made it 2-0 just two minutes into the second period, latching onto the ball after Stephen Warnock missed his attempted clearance and slotted calmly past Shay Given. Vincent Kompany made it 3-0 just five minutes later, taking advantage of slack marking at a corner to head in powerfully.

Stephen Warnock atoned for his earlier error by blasting in a loose ball off the underside of the cross bar to make it 3-1, but James Milner reminded us all what we’re missing – as if we needed it – by hitting a quite sublime, curling effort into the top corner from around 20 yards. He didn’t celebrate.

And that’s about it. There is much to discuss about the tactics of team selection. It might be a little odd opting to play Emile Heskey on the right of a defensive 4-5-1 shape, but that wasn’t the difference between getting something from this game or not.

No one was particularly poor, not really, they’re just better than us. Ciaran Clark did very well, he deserves a mention, but that’s about it.

Aston Villa: Given, Hutton, Dunne, Clark, Warnock, Delph (Albrighton 77′), Petrov, Ireland (N’Zogbia 55′), Heskey (Bannan 64′), Agbonlahor, Bent. Unused subs: Guzan, Cuellar, Herd, Weimann.

Man City: Hart, Richards (Kolo 66′), Kompany, Lescott, Clichy, De Jong, Barry, Johnson (Hargreaves 77′), Yaya (Silva 65′), Milner, Balotelli. Unused subs: Pantilimon, Kolarov, Nasri, Dzeko.