Brobbey scored a hat-trick and still lost, and Haaland has now scored against all 25 teams he has faced
Manchester City won an eight-goal game 5-3 at the Etihad to move three points clear, and Brian Brobbey became the first player in nearly nineteen years to score three in a Premier League match his side lost.
Sep 20, 2026
Eight goals at the Etihad on Sunday, and the man who will remember the afternoon longest is the one who went home with nothing. Manchester City beat Sunderland 5-3, stayed top of the Premier League and opened up a three-point lead. Brian Brobbey scored three times for the losing side.
City led three times before half-time
Enzo Fernandez put City ahead after nine minutes with a free kick. Brobbey had it level three minutes later. Rayan Cherki made it 2-1 in the 29th minute, Brobbey equalised again on 33, and Antoine Semenyo restored the lead on 43. Three separate City leads inside one half, which Opta counts as only the seventh time that has happened in a Premier League match.
There was not a lot of defending in any of it.
Semenyo and Brobbey trade again after the break
Semenyo got his second in the 57th minute, a low finish from the left that made it 4-2 and looked for about 120 seconds like the goal that settled it. Brobbey completed his hat-trick on 59. Erling Haaland eventually did settle it on 81 minutes, set up by Josko Gvardiol, the goal initially ruled out for offside before a VAR check awarded it.
Brobbey picked an unusual afternoon for a hat-trick
He is the sixth player in Premier League history to score three in a match his team lost. The last was Roque Santa Cruz, for Blackburn at Wigan, in December 2007, nearly nineteen years ago.
He is also Sunderland’s first top-flight hat-trick scorer since Jermain Defoe against Swansea City in January 2016, and only the fourth player to take three off the side sitting top of the table on the morning of the match. The other three are Robbie Fowler against Aston Villa in November 1998, Dirk Kuyt against Manchester United in March 2011 and Romelu Lukaku against Manchester United in May 2013. Sofascore gave Brobbey 9.9 out of 10, which is about as high as that scale goes.
Haaland finally has the full set
Sunderland were the one Premier League club Haaland had faced without scoring against. His goal on 81 minutes closed that off. He has now scored against all 25 Premier League teams he has played.
Five from five, and a scoreline City will not want repeated
City have won all five league games and are the only side in the division with a perfect record. Arsenal lost at Brighton on Saturday, so the gap at the top is three points.
The underlying numbers are less flattering. Sunderland finished with 4.32 expected goals to City’s 2.72 and put nine shots on target against six. Teams do not usually lose a match they created that much in, and City do not usually win one they were second best in. Both things happened here.