Manchester City began the 2025\/26 Premier League season with a dominant 4-0 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux Stadium.<\/p>\n
Erling Haaland scored twice, the third time he has recorded a brace on the opening matchday and the fourth occasion he has found the net on day one. New signings Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki, who together cost over \u00a375m in the summer window, made immediate impacts across the team, contributing two goals and an assist between them.<\/p>\n
City selected James Trafford in goal ahead of Stefan Ortega after Ederson was excluded from the travelling squad. The club are reported to be keen on a replacement and Ederson will likely join Galatasaray this summer, with Gianluigi Donnarumma mentioned as a possible target. Rodri missed the match after sustaining an injury in the Club World Cup against Al Hilal; the 2024 Ballon d\u2019Or winner was sidelined for the majority of 2024\/25 following an anterior cruciate ligament injury.<\/p>\n
Wolves introduced summer signing Jhon Arias in the second half after Jean-Ricner Bellegarde and Marshall Munetsi were preferred in the starting XI. Arias had stood out for Fluminense in the Club World Cup and was brought on with the hope of adding flair.<\/p>\n
The opening 45 saw several close calls. Munetsi had an effort ruled out for offside and briefly occupied an advanced role on the right flank. In the 34th minute Haaland opened the scoring after a move involving Tijjani Reijnders and a Rico Lewis pass. Reijnders, on his Premier League debut following his summer move from AC Milan for \u00a346.5m, doubled the lead minutes later after poor defensive control from Emmanuel Agbadou.<\/p>\n
Strand Larsen forced a near miss early in the second half, and later Haaland completed his brace following combination play from Oscar Bobb and Reijnders. Rayan Cherki, wearing the No.10 shirt, came off the bench and scored his first Premier League goal for City to finish the scoring.<\/p>\n
Manchester City sit top of the table after matchday one; Wolves occupy the bottom and face Tottenham Hotspur next weekend.<\/p>\n
The lineups<\/p>\n
WOL: S\u00e1; Doherty, Agbadou, Toti; Hoever, Andr\u00e9, Gomes, M\u00f8ller Wolfe; Munetsi, Larsen, Bellegarde<\/p>\n
MCI: Trafford; Lewis, Stones, Dias, A\u00eft-Nouri; Reijnders, Nico, Silva; Bobb, Haaland, Doku<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haaland brace and debut goals from Reijnders and Cherki sealed Manchester City’s 4-0 opening win now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,783],"tags":[272,796],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-wolverhampton-wanderers","tag-erling-haaland","tag-tijjani-reijnders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1792,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions\/1792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}