IT started with a hug and a handshake – and ended with a bloodied nose and a dose of harsh reality.
Welcome again Vincent. Now let’s not overlook who’s the grasp and who is the pupil, right here, eh?
A standing ovation from the fans who worshipped him for 11 years, and the warmest of embraces from Pep Guardiola forward of this sixth round showdown.
Then an end to the geniality and a jab for the jugular, as Erling Haaland led the cost for the throat and it all turned just another day within the office for Guardiola and his City slickers.
And a painful smack in the chops for Kompany’s Clarets as to what lies in wait as soon as they are again in the rarefied environment of the Premier League.
It truly turned so cruel in the long run that you simply half anticipated a towel to return floating across from the Burnley dugout.
If referee John Brooks had an oz of compassion he’d have stopped this early. An FA Cup tie that was a genuine contest for over half an hour ultimately became an exhibition.
By the top Metropolis have been so on prime and Burnley so browbeaten that the house aspect might have been carried out for bullying.
If it was an audition for which of Kompany’s Clarets have been up to becoming a member of him on the journey again within the Promised Land subsequent term, you’d need to say not many would have handed it.
To be trustworthy, for 33 minutes they should have been starting to marvel what all of the fuss was about with the Premier League, City and this supposed objective machine referred to as Haaland.
Two devastatingly medical first half minutes advised them exactly what…drop your guard for a cut up second with him round and it’s curtains.
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So out of the blue half time pats on the back all round because finger pointing at who went lacking the place and when. Haaland does that to a aspect.
Twice they gave him half a yard within the first half. Each occasions he punished them in the deadliest trend. They did it again within the second half and guess what? Similar again.
A cruel nudge in the ribs for Kompany and his crew, too, that when you might get away with it within the Championship, in relation to this degree, not a chance.
Take Metropolis’s opener, for instance. A straight forward ball by way of the center from Julian Alvarez, and Haaland was via on Bailey Peacock-Farrell.
A dip of the shoulder, the trace of a shimmy and a poke beneath the keeper with the surface of his left boot.
Two minutes later the Norwegian was in again, Peacock-Farrell was crushed again, and Metropolis have been within the FA Cup semi-finals….again.
This time the creation was just a little extra crafted, Kevin De Bruyne setting Phil Foden free down the left with a slide rule ball inside Connor Roberts.
Foden appeared up, took purpose and delivered the right low cross which Haaland met at just the best time to sidefoot in from close range.
Recreation over, then, earlier than half-time. Extremely after Burnley seemed to have finished the donkey work of weathering an early storm. That worked out nicely, then.
Earlier than they knew it Haaland was completing his sixth hat-trick of the season, taking his tally to EIGHT in two video games, and bagging yet one more match ball.
Once more Foden was the creator, this time with a fizzing low drive which struck the upright and was clinically dispatched by the Norwegian’s one-touch finish.
As if to prove that the quickfire first half one-two was no one-off, City then produced another to make it 4.
Riyad Mahrez and De Bruyne have been the architects and Alverez the finisher, smashing into an empty internet with the Clarets cracked vast open.
Time, then, for Haaland to take a break. Not a nasty week’s work, all informed, to go together with the five Champions League objectives he helped himself to towards Leipzig on Tuesday.
And to assume all of them scoffed when it was first advised he might reach 50 in his first season in England.
Last night time’s nap hand has left him on 42 already. The best way it’s going, he’ll be dissatisfied if his eventual haul stops at “just” half a century.
City definitely didn’t stop together with his departure, mind, and Cole Palmer – the man who came on for Haaland – received in on the act by volleying into an empty internet.
Alvarez completed the romp by tapping in some extent blank sixth, earlier than referee Brooks finally referred to as a halt to the punishment.
Although for Kompany, one way or the other you think about it is going to take a while longer for the ache to subside.