City looks unbeatable as Chelsea implodes
LONDON — Breaking a 103-year club record, Manchester City reeled off its 10th straight Premier League victory on Saturday. For Jose Mourinho, a landmark day produced an unwelcome result, with his 100th home league game in charge of Chelsea ending in only a second loss.
City’s fourth success of the new season was a 2-0 win over Watford, with $76-million US signing Raheem Sterling scoring his first league goal for Manuel Pellegrini’s side, which looks irresistible in its quest to regain the trophy from Chelsea. Fortunately for City, whose other goal was scored by Fernandinho, Chelsea appears to be imploding.
A 2-1 loss to Crystal Palace left Chelsea with only four points from four games heading into the international break.
Although Radamel Falcao cancelled out Bakary Sako’s Palace opener by heading in his first Chelsea goal in the 79th minute, the south London visitors were back in front inside two minutes through Joel Ward.
“I cannot say that I had 11 players performing at the same time,” Mourinho said. “Two or three of them their individual performance was far from good. I blame myself for not changing one of them.”
Chelsea is eight points adrift of early leader City. It’s a daunting gap, but Mourinho knows how easy it is to throw away a lead. Before winning the title by eight points in May, Chelsea recovered from conceding the same advantage over City midway through the season.
Liverpool harbours ambitions of winning a 19th title — the first since 1990 — but could struggle to just return to the top four, as Saturday’s 3-0 home capitulation to West Ham demonstrated. West Ham ended a winless run at Anfield stretching to 1963.
“A lot of it today was selfinflicted,” Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers said. “We gave poor goals away and that was the biggest disappointment.”
Manuel Lanzini and Mark Noble sent West Ham into a halftime lead. Although Liverpool had Philippe Coutinho sent off at the start of the second half, Noble was also dismissed before Diafra Sakho completed West Ham’s second away win of the season.
Arsenal relied on Fabricio Coloccini’s own goal to win 1-0 at Newcastle despite the hosts playing for 75 minutes with 10 men after Aleksandar Mitrovic was dismissed.
There were two red cards at Stoke, shown to two home players — Ibrahim Afellay and Charlie Adam — within seven minutes against West Bromwich Albion. West Brom edged a 1-0 win through Salomon Rondon’s header.
Aston Villa and Sunderland drew 2-2 and Tottenham-Everton ended 0-0. Bournemouth, playing its first season in the top flight, has four points from four after drawing 1-1 with Leicester.