Premier League 2019/20, Manchester City 8-0 Watford: 5 Talking Points 

#1 Bernardo Silva and de Bruyne shine in vastly different ways

de Bruyne completed the rout with a blistering eighth late on, as City thumped Watford with ease

Bernardo Silva has asserted himself as one of Guardiola's most reliable performers and earned his starting berth in a variety of midfield positions over the past eighteen months.

However, one criticism of the Portuguese international's game is that there's still room for improvement in a creative sense. Despite the all-action midfield displays, orchestrating attacks for teammates or harrying opponents into mistakes, he doesn't get involved enough in the final third.

That's largely to do with his positional awareness and a tendency to defer to other creative players - Sterling, Aguero and Kevin de Bruyne, for example. On this occasion, he netted his first career hat-trick and it's sure to give him plenty of confidence.

To contrast last season, he netted 13 goals and created 13 more across all competitions in 48 games. Although he continues asserting his world-class quality, if he wants to be respected on a wider scale in Europe and worldwide, he must take his attacking repertoire to the next level in that regard - something Sterling learned the hard way after criticism over previous seasons gone by.

As for De Bruyne, he's earned that respect and worldwide acclaim after consistently brilliant performances at club and international level for a number of seasons now.

The issue for him is that last term, City won the league largely without their chief playmaker and it had critics question whether he really was their best player after all, considering how integral he is to their play between midfield and attack.

Performances like his on this occasion reaffirm the fact he's indispensable to Pep and equally his teammates. He oozes class and is a crucial player, one Watford simply gave too much respect to on this occasion.

The match statistics speak for themselves: a whopping eight key passes, four big chances created, 87.9% pass completion rate, four dribbles completed. Netting one goal and creating two more but if you watch the game back again, really he could've had more across both categories.

Although many have already suggested he'll be rested at specific points over the season to manage his workload, it's understandable given they're eager to avoid a recurrence of the knee and muscular injuries that plagued him last term.

Stats' source: SofaScore and WhoScored