For Newcastle, this was like being kept at arm’s length in a play fight by a dismissive older brother. They were slower, weaker and less savvy than Manchester City.
A defeat that felt inevitable from the moment Bernardo Silva opened the scoring on 13 minutes — he added a second on the half hour — means their wait for a domestic trophy will extend to the biblical definition of a lifetime, three score years and 10.
But how many years will be added to that? Last summer, many were measuring the expected wait in months, not years.