Newcastle clawed back from two goals down at St James' Park on Saturday, and somewhere in the middle of that collapse-turned-scramble, Erling Haaland notched career goal number 300, a number that used to mean a coronation. Not this year. Haaland used the same week to tell reporters that City are still in a "rebuilding phase" next to Arsenal, the team that actually won the league last season and, more to the point, the team City now measure themselves against instead of the other way around. That is not a humble-brag from a serial winner. That is a man reading the table correctly.

Here is the part that matters more than the milestone. Pep Guardiola built the most feared attacking machine in Premier League history and then spent last summer selling and shuffling as much as buying, and the goal that got Haaland to 300 arrived in a City side that could not close out Newcastle at 2-0. Arsenal did not sit still either, they reinforced a squad that already had City's number. Three games into the season, the club with the financial muscle to buy its way out of any hole is instead admitting, out loud, that someone else is currently better at spending it. Three hundred goals is a monument. It just is not the same monument it used to be.