Pep Guardiola football has finally arrived at Manchester City.

Pep Guardiola football has finally arrived at Manchester City... they've scored 15 goals and conceded zero in their last three games

• Manchester City have been cut loose by Pep Guardiola in the past three games 
• Victories over Liverpool and Feyenoord was followed up in style at Watford
• The winner of this contest knew they would go top of the Premier League
• Sergio Aguero scored a hat-trick as City ran riot with a 6-0 win at Vicarage Road 

By Adam Crafton  SEP 16, 2017

In Spain, they use the phrase ganar sin despeinarse to describe victories as handsome as these. It translates as to win without messing your hair up, and Manchester City's magnificence here was such that you might imagine some players were able to exit Vicarage Road without breaking into the merest sweat.

This was a masterclass, the kind of orchestral exhibition for which Pep Guardiola is famed. Last season, there were moments that implied we may witness greatness from Guardiola's City, notably a first-half performance at Old Trafford during a splendid start to the campaign. Yet cracks began to emerge and vulnerabilities arose in City's armoury.

The ability to spend £200m in a summer transfer window helps, of course, and the acquisitions of Ederson in the City goal and the powerful and dynamic full-backs Kyle Walker and Benjamin Mendy have transformed City from contenders to favourites. 

On the bench, the talent of Bernardo Silva and Leroy Sane watched on, while the German Ilkay Gundogan is also back on the scene. The depth of quality is staggering and it is probably a good thing for the competitive spirit of the Premier League that Alexis Sanchez did not swap London for Manchester on the final day of the transfer window.

At times here, City made it appear so easy, so straightforward that you might believe it all to be a choreographed show; so pinpoint were the passes, so rehearsed seemed the movement. But this is not effortless football, this is a fine-tuned blend of art and graft, beauty and industry.

On the days it all comes together, it is a bewitching experience. We have seen this from Guardiola teams at Barcelona and Bayern Munich and the evidence of the past week suggests it may now become the norm at City, too. Three games against Liverpool at home and Feyernoord and Watford away have yielded 15 goals in favour and not one against. The doubters will point to a similarly blockbuster start from City last season and the manner in which it all fizzled out as winter approached but this was an ominous demonstration of their qualities.

For Watford, this was a grievous ordeal, an exercise in quite exquisite agony. Sir Alex Ferguson, the former Manchester United manager twice defeated by Pep Guardiola's Barcelona in Champions League finals, equates the experience as akin to spinning on a carousel, his players left dizzied and disorientated. Watford supporters will know the feeling.

This was 6-0 but it might have been a dozen. City threatened at every turn. Kevin De Bruyne has been reinvented from a wide playmaker to a deep-lying dictator and his play bears shades of Paul Scholes. 

Alongside him, David Silva remains the conductor and buzzing around in front of them, Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus bamboozle defenders. Every movement appeared a joy; the one-touch passing, the close control, the precision, the flicks, the tricks, the cheeky nutmegs. When the interplay did not work, the set-pieces did, and Aguero and Nicolas Otamendi both showcased City's aerial threat from dead-ball situations.

As the heavens opened in the first-half, we wondered whether a Watford team who had begun this season four games unbeaten in the Premier League may turn this into a contest. Certainly, Liverpool were scarred by their opening day high-scoring draw at this ground. Yet Marco Silva's side could not lay a glove on their opponents.

Watford almost became terrified of forward play, as though every one of their own attacks threatened to end in a punishing City counter-punch. City really do spring forward in devastating fashion, committing numbers, carving angles and dispatching their final passes clinically.

This was the Premier League's most audacious team playing without pressure, in total freedom. City's supporters were in their element; bringing back the Poznan chant and lauding their team as the new table-toppers. Their team will take some stopping.