Iheanacho celebrates with his City team-mates after his 90th-minute winner gave Pellegrini the win

Form is temporary and class is permanent is what we City fans have been taunted with. The saying may indeed be true and class is definitely permanent. But what is also close to being permanent is a five-point gap. I’ll give all my readers a second to digest that. If you’re a City fan, you should have grinned at least, if you’re not, you’d have frowned in disgust.

Say whatever you want, but there is an immense sense of optimism around the blue half of Manchester. Yes, before I get too arrogant, I should take a step back and accept that September is not the time to be celebrating winning the league, but leading the table with a 100% record after five games is enough reason to celebrate.

54 million pound signing, Kevin De Bruyne was given his Manchester City debut as he replaced Sergio Aguero early on in the first half

If our fantastic run of form was not reason enough for us to remain positive, then the manner in which we beat Crystal Palace surely is. Swaggering past your opponents and putting in boatloads of goals is fantastic, but winning a game after not deserving to is the stuff of champions. Alan Pardew’s Crytal Palace gave our boys a really tough time yesterday, and the truth is that nothing less was expected. We lined up against the second placed team in the league and we were guaranteed a tough time regardless of who our opponents were. A victory seemed distant and I would have very happily taken a draw. But who knew that Kelechi Iheanacho had this in mind when he came on in place of Wilfred Bony in the 89th minute of the game.

Jesus Navas missed Manchester City’s best chance of the match as he failed to put the ball in an empty net

The 18-year-old Nigerian talent made an impact within seconds of coming into the fray as he put the ball past Palace ‘keeper Alex McCarthy from close range. This late blow shattered Palace hearts and it’s not at all surprising why. The home side did a fantastic job of thwarting City attacks, and they did so with utmost ease to be honest. The most clear cut opportunity that we had fell to Jesus Navas. The Spanish winger did a fantastic job to sprint with the ball ahead of the opposition defenders before expertly rounding the goalkeeper. What followed however was an error to rival Fernando Torres’ well documented empty net miss and the less we say about that chance, the better.

Manuel Pellegrini can be forgiven for thinking that that was his first and last chance to get anything out of the game.  But as I’ve already said, Iheanacho had other plans. This one goal by the youngster should also act as a fitting reply to all our critics who have labelled us as a side that cannot produce new talents. Manchester City are going places and not just by purchasing players, but also creating them. But that’s an argument for another day and I’ll leave our haters to bicker as we sit and admire the view from atop the Barclays Premier League.