No slip-ups as Haaland finds scoring boots and City roll Swiss aside...

PEP Guardiola showed his players a picture of a mountain ahead of this season's Champions League campaign, attempting to hammer home that they needed to come right down from the Treble and start at the bottom if they were to once again climb the heights.

- SIMON BAJKOWSKI

With the Bernese Alps providing a spectacular backdrop to the Wankdorf Stadium, the manager got more of an idea of which stars might do most of the scaling this season.

Erling Haaland scored twice and a trio of players excelled as the Blues picked up a 3-1 win in Switzerland that will see them fly back to Manchester for the derby on a high.

Whether it was because of concerns over the playing surface or with the United game on Sunday in mind, or both, there were seven changes from the team that beat Brighton on Saturday. Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, John Stones, Kyle Walker and Julian Alvarez all watched from the bench yet will surely expect to start at Old Trafford.

This match provided a reminder of the small slices of luck that can make a big difference in football. Alvarez hit the ball onto his standing foot on Saturday and it wrongfooted Lewis Steele in the Brighton goal, whereas Jeremy Doku did similar here in Bern and it allowed the Young Boys keeper Anthony Racioppi to scramble a hand to the ball and stop what should have been an easy goal, keeping the score at 0-0.

The miss, and the save, fired up the home crowd to get behind a goalie whose place in the team is not longstanding and had been under some pressure after being questioned for one conceded in the game with Red Star.

For City's visit, Racioppi was in inspired form as he also made terrific saves from Doku, Rodri, and Jack Grealish.