Blackburn 0 - 2 City

• The perfect start. We are already halfway to matching our number of away league wins from last season. More important, though, was that we battled our way to success. Anyone can win when playing well. But to win a battle - against tough opponents, in difficult conditions, at a hostile ground - this is the stuff of the Big Four. Next stop: Fratton Park. Same again, please.

• More interesting is that this battling performance was put in by a rather attack-minded team. Hughes surprised many of us by adopting a system that wasn't exactly a great success last year: one holding midfielder (Gareth Bary, then Stephen Ireland, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Robinho and two strikers - Emmanuel Adebayor and Craig Bellamy in this case. Not quite 4-1-5, but not exactly the cautious approach we expected. So for that team to grind out at win at Ewood Park is a real testament to our mental strength. We'll be even tougher when Nigel de Jong (or Kompany or Zabaleta) are drafted in alongside Barry.

• Of our many forwards, it was a triumph for Adebayor to score on his debut. A goal taken with the confidence one would expect of a £25million striker, he combines physicality with technicality in a way we're not really used to at City. We've seen a lot of the former alone (Corradi, Benjani, Caicedo, Vassell), a bit of the latter (Bianchi, Sturridge), too much of neither (Dickov, Samaras) - but both? This is novel.

• Until we buy another centre back our defence will continue to be in a state of transition. Kolo Touré did well - and Shay Given kept us in the game - but it's hard to see how Richard Dunne has a long term future at City while we're so actively pursuing other options. If we do buy Lescott (or Distin or Upson) then Dunne would presumably be third choice, relegating Onuoha to fourth choice - a strange position given his new contract and our lack of European football. So we're still not quite the finished product.