Tyrone Marshall, senior football writer at Manchester Evening News, believes that Manchester City forward Erling Haaland is back to his best.

Norway international Haaland heads into Sunday's Premier League game against Brentford having scored 15 goals for club and country this season.

Manchester City are seventh in the Premier League table after six games. What have you made of their start to the season?

Leading up to the international break, the first three games, it felt a lot like last season, to the point that even the results were identical: they won away at Wolves, lost at home to Tottenham, lost away at Brighton.

It all felt very similar, like not a lot had changed. After the international break, it feels like they have taken a major step forward, with four tough games, three wins and a draw, at the time of speaking.

They were very close to a win at Arsenal. It feels like that has been a major step forward, even to the point of just changing last year's results, in a very simple analysis, when they lost home to Manchester United and they got thrashed at Arsenal.

It feels like something might be back, or at least on the way back. The last five games have been a lot more positive than the first three.

Other than the Community Shield, there was no major silverware for the first time since 2016/17, which was Pep Guardiola’s first season in charge. How eager are Man City to put that right this season?

Very keen as a lot of this squad have not won anything with City. There has been so many new signings in January and the summer that it is a relatively new squad.

A lot of them have not got any history of the treble, the four titles in a row or the countless trophies they have won, so a lot of them are looking to win with City for the first time.

It is pretty obvious Guardiola is closer to the end than the start of his time at the club, but he will want to leave with more trophies and more silverware, so there is a real desire to put last season behind them and try and win something, but more importantly, to try and challenge again.

They were out of the Champions League very early last year and they were never really in contention in the Premier League from autumn onwards.

Erling Haaland already has eight goals in six Premier League games and is closing in on joining the prestigious 100 Club. There is just no stopping him, is there?

No, there is not! It feels like he always starts seasons very well.

He started last season pretty well and then went off the boil, but he looks different this year. He was added to the leadership group in the summer, which was quite interesting.

Guardiola normally lets the players decide who is going to be captain and who is in the leadership group, but he changed it this year and did it himself because of what he saw last year.

I think he felt the team spirit fell apart a bit last year. He made Bernardo Silva captain and added Haaland to the leadership group, where there are four players.

It does feel like Haaland has embraced that. Some of his performances this season have been exceptional and it is not just the goalscoring.

The quality of his goal against Arsenal was brilliant, even the pass to tee up Tijjani Reijnders to start the move.

But he is heading and kicking everything away in his penalty area and he was incredible defensively against Manchester United and Arsenal.

You watch him now and it is almost like his shoulders are back, his chest is out, and he looks even more imposing.

Maybe the leadership role has brought something extra out of him. Pep has already said a few times this year that it feels like this is the Haaland of the first season, who was incredible for City.

It does feel like he is back to his very highest levels at the moment.

Which player should Brentford keep an eye out for?

The one that has got potential to really kick on and go to another level is Jérémy Doku. At the time of speaking, there are a couple of games until the Brentford game, but he has just had his best week for City, I would say.

He got two assists against United, scored against Napoli, and then he was really good against Arsenal in carrying that counter-attacking threat and carrying the ball out of defence.

Sometimes you watch him and his dribbling ability has never been in doubt and he is amazing to watch, but there is nowhere near enough end product.

But I have felt for a while, if he delivers that end product, there is no reason he could not get 10 goals and 10 assists in a league season.

He can go to world-class level because he can beat most full-backs but, a lot of the time he is beating the full-back and running past the full-back, but it does not matter because there is no end product, there is no dangerous cross, no real idea for what he is going to do.

If that all clicks, though, which there are early signs that it might be doing, then he is the kind of player who has got the potential, A, to go to another level, and B, also just to be incredibly exciting to watch.

What should Keith Andrews’ men expect in terms of shape and style?

It is hard to know. I think a lot of how they played against Arsenal was forced by the fact they played on the Thursday night and did not have much preparation time.

They played the same team and they were all saying how tired they were after the week they had had, and Arsenal played really well. But they are clearly changing a little bit.

They will still look a lot like a City team, but the biggest tactical change has probably been in goal, where they have gone from Ederson to Gianluigi Donnarumma.

We saw it a bit at Arsenal, that what Donnarumma might not give you with his feet, he will give you as an incredibly commanding goalkeeper.

Mikel Arteta said after the Arsenal game how dominant he is in the six-yard box, and we have seen in the league this year more and more long throws, more and more set-pieces just launched into the six-yard box.

Donnarumma has probably got to be the best goalkeeper in the league now to deal with that.

Brentford are the masters of the long throw, so it will be interesting to see Donnarumma against that, if he continues to dominate the six-yard box and come for everything and punch everything the way he did against Arsenal, and whether that neuters that tactic for teams against City.

Other than that, they look pretty similar, but they are obviously going to play different at Brentford than they did at Arsenal.

City have won three of the last four meetings, though the last ended in a 2-2 draw in January. What’s your score prediction for this one?

I think City will edge it and I am going to go for a 3-1 win.