Riyadh Mahrez's early strike seals Manchester City win against Tottenham at Wembley

A result that implies normal service, Manchester City badert their superiority over the Premier League with another big-six win, but from the most abnormal of situations.

This was not a city at their best, and it was a long way off Tottenham Hotspur at their best, with that difficult to connect to the somewhat farcical surroundings. This 1-0 win for Pep Guardiola is played on the pitch by a series of NFL games, with the American competition still in the game. The White Hart Lane was supposed to be played on Sunday.

The fair conclusion is also played in a strangely low crowd of just 56,854, with some people talking about mildly protesting the situation. It's all about the big-six games for some time – and maybe even more so than it's expensive. Spurs – with that crowd it's often only sounding like it's more than 2,000 times that kind of cavernous stadium.

Riyadh Mahrez's match-winner, and the celebration that followed. Having so sleekly finished, he was in the commemoration of the tragic death of Vishai Srivaddhanaprabha, his boss at title-winning Leicester City.

It is located on the night, and settled the night.

Even the build-up to that goal, however, is the ragged nature of the game.

Sure, it could have ended up with the scoring of the type of cut-back-and-finish move they made their specialty, but that was not really how they crafted it. There was not much craft at all. There was admittedly another brilliant Ederson ball that really can not be described as a punt, but City still got a bit of a break as Kieran Trippier failed to just head it. Sterling was left to strip and easily move the ball back to an obviously emotional Mahrez.

While they should really be in the game of the game, they are usually like this, and can really get going in possession, this was just another oddity. There was no pattern.

There were only break-outs of attacking play, and quality. Mahrez did later hit the post, and Kane was a brilliant long-range strike, but the match was still a bit of quality.

Mahrez labored on the ball far too long when he could have delivered Sterling, Toby Alderweireld headed into the arms of Ederson too easily, and there was much too much chaos in the backlines without the precision in attack to punish it. That was summed up when Kane was put through the goal with City properly caught out, only to take a dreadful first touch.

And this was the wider issue. It was particularly difficult to divide the situation from the state of the pitch and the strangeness of the occasion.

There was admittedly the unsuitability of the Spurs training to the game, given how vulnerable Trippier and Ben Davies looked at times. Pochettino would have gone with Jan Vertonghen been fit. As it was, his side was too often overrun, but City was not overwhelming.

Aguero was presented with two good opportunities in the second half, only to hit both straight out-of-form Hugo Lloris.

It must have been galling for a city that could be replaced with Argentina by Kevin De Bruyne, effectively forcing the Spurs boss to bring about one of the stars in Dele Alli.

For all the fear factor in De Bruyne, mind, he ended up central to a moment that summed up the game. The Belgian – of all players – got caught with the ball in his own box, only for Erik Lamela to then blaze the ball well with a weird effort.

It was still better than his next effort. With Dele naturally at the center of what was finally a flowing Spurs surge, the sub fed Lamela right in front of goal … just to see Lamela offer up an even worse effort.

Replays that have been shown to be bad luck, and may have caused Lamela to hit him with his ankle rather than his foot.

And yet you could say it was arguably fitting. Spurs should not have been playing this game here,

This, meanwhile, was why City paid for Mahrez. They were not at their best when they were there.

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