Maresca watched on as his side took control of a thrilling contest in the second half. From 2-2 at the break, Madueke’s quickfire treble ensured we would leave the West Midlands with our first league victory of the campaign. There was extra satisfaction when Joao Felix completed the scoring on his second debut.

A social media post from Madueke in the build-up to the game ensured he incurred the wrath of the home support from the first minute, but he responded in the best way possible with his finest showing yet in blue. Maresca assessed it afterwards.

‘I can judge Noni’s performance, which was fantastic,’ he said.

‘Not only second half, even first half the first 10 or 15 minutes he was always one-v-one creating something.

‘Since day one I said he’s the kind of winger I really like. He is working very good with us, but the best thing today from Noni was not the hat-trick, it was the way he defended for 90 minutes the counter-attacks.

‘That showed the right mentality I am asking from the players. It was for Noni, and it was for Christo Nkunku who played five minutes. Joao Felix was the same. If we want to build something, first of all you need the right mentality, and from all of them it was very good.’

We had twice led in the first half but the game was in the balance at 2-2 when Maresca got together with his players again in the dressing room…

‘I said in a delicate way we needed to be more accurate. We started the first 15 minutes very good. We scored a goal and we had two or three more chances. Then we started to lose easy balls, and when you lose easy balls you concede counter-attacks, set-pieces, and you lose confidence. This happened the other day against Servette.

‘I just said to play the way we want to play we need to be a little bit more accurate. We can lose the ball if they press us very intensely, but we cannot lose the ball by giving it away by making the wrong decision. The difference between the first half and second half was being more accurate.’

Cole Palmer had a hand in all six goals and opened his account for the season…

'I’ve known Cole for four or five years. I had him for one season at City with the second team, then with the first team.

'He’s a special player, a special guy, a special person. I’m not surprised at all by the goals he scored last year, the goal he scored today, the assists. He is a top player.'