Yaya Toure and David Silva's Form Makes Manchester City Favourites vs. Chelsea

If they arrived at The Hawthorns talking about Raheem Sterling, then they left discussing Yaya Toure and David Silva.

The big Ivorian and the diminutive Spaniard dished out timely reminders that newer doesn’t always mean better, as Manchester City delivered surely the most convincing performance of the opening round of Premier League fixtures on Monday night.

The visitors blew away West Bromwich Albion 3-0 in a display which featured, according to @OptaJoe, more completed passes in the first half of the match than all but three of the division’s sides put together in 90 minutes over the weekend.

But over-indulgence in statistics often means you miss the beautiful things about the game. Combining brutality and beauty has long been a trademark of Toure and Silva, who were both at their imperious best in the West Midlands.

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Going into the new campaign, there were plenty who were convinced that we’d never see Toure in a City shirt again following the somewhat tame end to last season experienced by both the midfielder and his club. Reports like this one from the Daily Telegraph, linking him to Paris Saint-Germain and Internazionale, proved commonplace.

Suddenly he was yesterday’s man, evidence that Manuel Pellegrini needed to overhaul his squad and damaged goods that City could do with shipping out.

All of which ignored the fact that Toure can still be one of the most destructive players on the planet when everything is in working order, and he can almost stroll through the majority of matches before striding forward and having telling impacts upon them—just as he did for the first and second goals at West Brom.

Silva’s style is vastly different, of course, and it was a style which was seen throughout another imperious display.

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If Sterling is supposed to revolutionise the way that City attack this season, then obviously no one told the club’s most watchable midfielder. Toure thrived in the space behind Wilfried Bony—City’s other Ivory Coast international—who, whilst not generating any headlines, did at least occupy the home defence and provided space for his teammates behind him.

These are the spaces which Silva weaves his magic in, and the World Cup and double European Championship winner did just that in what was probably the best individual performance we’ve seen in this edition of the Premier League thus far.

What does it all mean? Well, three points and a place at the top of the fledgling league table for a start, but also a timely jab in the ribs for those who had bizarrely written off the club’s title chances before a ball had been kicked this season.

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Chelsea and Arsenal were the talk of the Premier League town before the big kick-off, but the London pair picked up just one point between them from their opening matches over the weekend, with the Blues now facing an early-season summit meeting at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday.

It is far, far too early to make sweeping title statements, of course. But with Toure, Silva and City in this form, and Chelsea looking insipid, uninspiring and a little unfit, you have to make the hosts the clear favourites to dish out an August psychological blow to Jose Mourinho, who will of course be without his first-choice goalkeeper at the weekend.

There would quite literally be no better time in the campaign for the champions to fall five points behind last season’s runners-up. However, given that they led from the front for pretty much all of the last campaign, a Chelsea loss would at least leave them looking to locate the panic button just in case it needs to be pressed.

No one wearing the darker shade of blue seems able to match the level of performance that City’s players gave at The Hawthorns at the moment, and although Mourinho will doubtless be trying to hatch a master plan to stop City’s slickers in their tracks, it’ll need to be a good one.

Or those leaving the Etihad will do so discussing Toure and Silva again.