Man City closes gap on Liverpool in race to top of the table
CHAMPION Manchester City cut the gap on English Premier League leader Liverpool to five points after a confident 2-0 victory at Crystal Palace on Saturday.
Gabriel Jesus and David Silva scored the goals in the day’s late match as City put the pressure on Liverpool, which faced Manchester United overnight.
City took almost 40 minutes to find the breakthrough in south London but two goals in two minutes sealed the win following two defeats in four league games. Jesus opened the scoring on 39 minutes and then Silva finished off a slick move with the second goal.
“We played good, created a lot of chances,” said Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola said.
“We conceded chances at the end but Ederson made two incredible saves. It’s three points and we move forward.
“Hopefully we can start from here and continue our good performance. Their keeper made a lot of saves but hopefully we can be more clinical.”
Leicester City continued its strong start as it came from behind to beat Burnley 2-1 and now sit third.
Chris Wood had stunned the home crowd on 16 minutes with the opening goal but Leicester fought back well.
Having been denied an equaliser by Video Assisted Referee, they levelled on the stroke of half-time through Jamie Vardy. And Youri Tielemans smashed in the winner on 74 minutes to maintain their strong start. Burnley thought it had equalised but Jonny Evans was tripped in the build-up and VAR ruled it out, leaving Leicester to take full points on the anniversary of former chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha’s death in a helicopter accident.
Chelsea is now fourth behind Leicester as they continued their resurgence by seeing off Newcastle 1-0, thanks to Marcos Alonso’s second-half goal. Elsewhere, struggling Tottenham Hotspur escaped defeat with a late equaliser in a 1-1 draw with Watford.
Dele Alli saved Spurs’ blushes with the leveller, though they needed VAR to award the goal.
“We made it difficult for ourselves,” Alli said. “We know we have a world-class team so it’s about showing what we can do when things don’t go our way.” Everton moved out of the relegation zone with a 2-0 win over West Ham, Bernard and Gylfi Sigurdssson scoring the goals.
And Matt Targett scored the winner as Aston Villa came from behind to beat Brighton 2-1.
The Seagulls’ afternoon was made more difficult when Socceroo Aaron Mooy was dismissed after picking up two yellow cards in five minutes, his first for kicking the ball away after conceding a freekick before he went through the back of Jack Grealish.
Wolves drew 1-1 with Southampton and Bournemouth were held to a goalless draw by Norwich in the day’s other matches.