Erling Haaland scored a hat-trick as Manchester City defeated Ipswich 4-1 at the Etihad Stadium, demonstrating the challenges of life in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
The Tractor Boys are back in the top flight for the first time in 22 years, and they had a dream start against the defending champions when Sammie Szmodics scored on his full debut, squeezing a shot through the legs of Ederson after seven minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the joy was short-lived as Manchester City hit back with three goals in four minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n First, Haaland equalised with a well-taken penalty, awarded following a review by the video assistant referee after Sam Allison had initially ruled that Savinho had dived.<\/span><\/p>\n Kevin De Bruyne then capitalised on hesitation by Ipswich goalkeeper Arijanet Muric to score before Haaland made it 3-1 after just 16 minutes, rounding Muric to fire in.<\/span><\/p>\n Manchester City could have been even further ahead as they hit the woodwork twice, although Ipswich had a strong shout for a penalty denied when Leif Davis appeared to be brought down by Brazil winger Savinho inside the box.<\/span><\/p>\n The second half saw arguably the biggest cheer of the game as Ilkay Gundogan \u2013 who completed his move from Barcelona back to City on a one-year deal on Friday \u2013 came on to mark his return to the club.<\/span><\/p>\n Just as Ipswich looked to have limited Manchester City to three goals, Haaland struck with a low drive from distance late on to complete his hat-trick.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Erling Haaland scored a hat-trick as Manchester City defeated Ipswich 4-1 at the Etihad Stadium, demonstrating the challenges of life in the Premier League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19283,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19281\/revisions\/19283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}