Manchester City are trading Pep Guardiola's flair for something plainer — and it's working

Four fully competitive games into the post-Pep Guardiola era and everything is ... fine. If that seems an insubstantial takeaway from Manchester City's 2-0 win over Porto, well maybe that's the point. They've done the guy whose whims challenge your notions of how football might be played. Now is the time to let the talent shine through.

There was more than enough of that for Enzo Maresca's first Champions League tie in charge of City to end in a comfortable victory. Not until just before the hour did Porto get a shot away at Gianluigi Donnarumma's goal. By then, Erling Haaland had delivered his 58th Champions League goal in 59 games, the precise full stop on a move of delicious interplay that flowed through each of the three attacking midfielders before the £125 million man Enzo Fernandez dropped a delivery on the head of his No. 9. His 59th cooled the nerves in added time.

It wasn't thrilling; it ended in an unnecessarily tense fashion but in the aggregate the performance was largely effective. That has been the story of City in the games that have really mattered since that heavy defeat in the Community Shield. Two out of three inferior domestic opponents were beaten in clunky fashion, the same again here. 

None of those matches have offered answers to the bigger questions that ailed Guardiola last season. How do they stop themselves from getting burned on transitions, something which happened again even if Porto did not turn those openings into shots? What happens if Haaland stubs his toe, let alone anything worse? Why do they get so slack with their leads?

Even with all those questions unanswered, City did enough right. Maresca might only have coached six Champions League games but his base operating structure is pretty well suited for a talent advantage on the road in this competition.

From the outset, his side were perfectly prepared to bide their time. Their possession was so frequently recycled that it must have been carbon neutral. In his first half as a Manchester City player, Ayyoub Bouaddi completed all 39 of his passes. Easier said than done, but when only eight of them go forward, the delta between the saying and doing is not that great.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with rocking up at the start of a European campaign and keeping things tight. The Dragao might be the second most challenging trip of the league phase for City, who play in Barcelona in December, and so there is nothing wrong with taking some of the spark out of the air. Given how ferociously the hosts reacted to a string of collisions and clashes late in the first half, sparked by Marc Guehi's heavy collision with Gabri Veiga, it might not have taken much to get the ground blazing.

What happened on the field was the best City could do to quell the Dragao. Slow and steady and then a burst, perhaps Rayan Cherki slipping into space between the lines or one of the wide forwards driving to the byline. Twice in the first half, Haaland was on hand to meet those cutbacks and Porto goalkeeper Diogo Costa had to be sprightly to deny him. Cherki drew the best save of the night on the rebound from the second such effort.

With no shots coming for the hosts, the pressure was building. It told early in the second half as Haaland's header crept onto the post and over the line after City dragged Porto one way then another in build-up. From there City might just have throttled the game with possession. Instead, they wobbled, trying to inject more of the pace that had brought them their opener but turning the contest into a more up-and-down one.

That is a problem when your goalkeeper does not radiate authority. Donnarumma is a fine shot-stopper but chaotic when called on to do much else. He would have conceded a penalty if Pepe had been onside when he collided with him. He was fortunate that the ball rolled wide when he came off his line to smash a clearance into William Gomez. Increasingly, the giant Italian looks like the edge case in the argument that what matters most when it comes to goalkeepers is whether they save shots. He does that better than almost anyone and the price City must pay for that is a thudding presence away from their goal line.

Their goalkeeper did not cost them today, and indeed, once the visitors accepted this would be an up-and-down sort of game, they found joy, Iliman Ndiaye a sparky presence off the bench. So too was Rayan Ait-Nouri, who rolled a low cross to Haaland in stoppage time, the big man side-footing home to secure a fourth win on the spin for Maresca.