This season, the most important thing a team can be is consistent. There isn't enough time between games to iron out kinks and the sheer amount of games being played in record short time means blips can spiral into major problems very quickly.

Manchester City started the season inconsistently and then towards the end of last year, everything clicked, and they put together a ridiculous 28-game unbeaten streak.

It's one thing for them to consistently repeat patterns that then produce victories, it's another for them to have a winning performance against Borussia Monchengladbach in the UEFA Champions League and for them to repeat it almost identically in the second leg.

Borussia Mönchengladbach kicked off in Budapest's Puskas Arena and quickly handed it over to Manchester City. Once again, methodical build up play was the name of their game and they held possession up to the German goal when chances, such as a flashy mid-air interception/tap-in attempt from Phil Foden, went out of play.

Monchengladbach's goalkeeper Yann Sommer would make a goal kick, or if the City attack was intercepted by the back line, Nico Elvedi or Matthias Ginter would get the ball back to the midfield. Here, City invariably swallowed it up and the routine would play out again.

Twelve minutes in, Riyad Mahrez played Kevin de Bruyne in on the edge of the Monchengladbach area and the Belgian international booted it in with an absolute screamer. The goal caught everyone off guard and hammered home the belief that City could score whenever they liked.

This was confirmed when Ilkay Gundogan made it 2-0 six minutes later. He danced through the Monchengladbach players and slotted it in at close range. City were 4-0 up on aggregate in under 20 minutes of the second leg and that's how it stayed.

City's next attempts on goal were stymied by Monchengladbach's defense and, in the second half, they essentially parked the bus. This wasn't a thrashing on par with, say, the 5-0 over West Brom or even Bayern Munich's 8-2 against Barcelona last year, however, if there was a Mercy Rule in European football, Monchengladbach manager Marco Rose would likely have gladly taken it.

City knew they had the game won from so early that they dialed back the energy to limit fatigue. It didn't matter much; they're so technically proficient that Monchengladbach could barely get the ball and, as time ticked away, so did their belief that they could overturn such a large goal tally.

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has a bad reputation in the Champions League. He hasn't won it for a decade and that's attributed to him tinkering so much with his side going into important games; it's why City have the most stacked team in the Premier League, one of the best in Europe, and then get knocked out every year by teams like Spurs and Olympique Lyon.

The squad for this game against Monchengladbach, which contained players such as the goalscorers de Bruyne and Gundogan who were rested this weekend, and the way in which they scored so quickly suggests that this game was very much an attempt to avoid being embarrassed by the smaller team. Instead of overthinking, Pep overloaded his team and they delivered overkill in the smoothest sense of the word.

Borussia Monchengladbach, once an exciting Bundesliga outfit giving it all they had, offered nothing over two legs. They played like a team who had definitely bottled it in the face of a much more powerful opponent.