CITY SOAR BACK TO THE TOP
Scrappy City push Reds off top spot
MANCHESTER CITY siezed the title initiative and returned to the top of the Premier League with a 2-0 victory at Everton last night. Two headers — by Aymeric Laporte in first-half stoppage time and Gabriel Jesus at the finish — saw the champions leapfrog Liverpool on goal difference, although City have played a game more. City boss Pep Guardiola said: ‘Always the application is there. The performance wasn’t what we expect but they tried. ‘Seven days ago we could have been seven points behind. Now we are top. What is the lesson? Never give up.’
JOB done. In different circumstances, Manchester City’s performance might have raised the odd eyebrow. They can certainly play better, and how.
But some nights are about the result, and the result alone. Nights like this one, when three points were required to restore City to the top of the table. How they are achieved is immaterial, which is probably just as well.
This was not vintage City. It was, however, effective City. They scored from a set-piece, which the world knows is Everton’s weakness, added a second at the death and defended resolutely and not a little cynically. When Fernandinho was finally booked with 17 minutes left he could have asked for another three or four offences to be taken into consideration.
All good teams have the ugly victory in them, mind, and the pressure was on for all the talk of this being the one match Everton manager Marco Silva could afford to lose. It certainly didn’t seem that way, no matter the negative impact an Everton defeat had on Liverpool’s title chances.
Evertonians might have sounded conflicted, but those in the darker blue shirts suffered no such anguish. Everton tried to find a way through but simply couldn’t and spent long periods of the second half testing massed ranks of City defenders. To their credit, they dug in, as champion do.
One wonders if Jurgen Klopp would have bothered to find the match last night — football people can tune into the games that others can’t, no illegal feeds for them — and whether he would have been encouraged by what he saw.
There was nothing here to suggest City are in better nick than Liverpool right now, even if Gabriel Jesus’s header at the second attempt deep into added time gave the scoreline an emphatic look. Still, they have impressively cut the leaders down to size over a matter of weeks.
Maybe it’s just that City know how to win a league as front-runners, while this is new territory for Liverpool. They have a game in hand, and play Bournemouth at home on Saturday, so may be back on top soon. But City know the course and distance and, last night, that certainly seemed to count.
It is an unfortunate indictment of Everton’s form of late that four of their biggest players were dropped from the starting line-up here, and the majority of locals were in full agreement. Gylfi Sigurdsson, Seamus Coleman, Richarlison and Cenk Tosun could all be found among the expensive jetsam on the bench, and few were doubting Marco Silva’s judgment.
Indeed, Everton started rather brightly, even if the game did soon settle into a familiar pattern of attack versus defence — City probing for an opening, Everton resilient and hoping to hit back on the counter. The first half wasn’t the best for either side. City were reminiscent of their performance at Newcastle last week, on top but not entirely convincing.
Leroy Sane on the left flank was particularly wasteful. He saw a lot of the ball but was loose in his treatment of it and too many City manoeuvres were frittered away by poor control, or a lame final pass. The best of it from him came after just three minutes when he snapped up an Everton clearance and hit a shot from 20 yards that flew inches wide of the far post.
Still, with Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling and Riyad Mahrez on the bench, it is not as if Pep Guardiola needed to press the panic button too early.
So City kept their cool and stretched Everton when they could. In the 19th minute, David Silva’s cross was met by Ilkay Gundogan at the near post and diverted on to the bar.
Yet Everton have a huge weakness from set-pieces, and it was this that Manchester City successfully exploited to give them the breakthrough before half-time. Silva’s men had conceded 16 goals from set-pieces this season coming into this match — including 11 in the Premier League, the worst in the competition — so this really shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
They can’t say they weren’t warned on the night, either, Aymeric Laporte coming very close from a David Silva corner after 16 minutes. It should have been a goal, with the defender no more than a yard out when he steered his header wide at the far post.
Did Everton learn their lesson? Did they heck. In added time before the break, City won a freekick midway in Everton’s half and what unfolded sums up why Silva’s season is proving so frustrating. It was a poor free-kick to give away, Idrissa Gueye on Fernandinho, but that alone need not have proved calamitous. How was Laporte given so much space, given what Everton had already seen? How was he given so much space considering what Everton must know about the weaknesses that have cost them?
Still, there it was: a teasing delivery from David Silva and Laporte in almost an identical position to the previous occasion, but this time able to send the ball back across goal, looping out of the reach of Jordan Pickford.
It was the first time City had got the ball on target all game, and the 15th time this season they had scored with their first goalbound opportunity. All the more reason then to keep it tight, particularly from set-pieces.
Yet it is hard to argue that Everton were hard done by when they had offered so little. One chance
was the sum of it in the first half, a nicely-worked move begun by captain Tom Davies — and what a credit to have that accolade at just 20 — picking out Theo Walcott with a lovely through pass. His cross found Bernard, whose header was deflected just wide.
Indeed, the biggest noise of the night came when Laporte hit Walcott in mid-air shortly after halftime. In rugby that sort of challenge is worthy of the sin bin, but referee Craig Pawson gave nothing bar a free-kick, which went begging. EVERTON (4-1-4-1): Pickford 7; Kenny 6.5, Keane 7, Zouma 7, Digne 6; Gueye 7; Walcott 5.5 (Tosun 80min), Davies 7, Gomes 6.5 (Sigurdsson 63), Bernard 7 (Richarlison 73); Calvert-Lewin 7. Subs not used: Stekelenburg, Coleman, McCarthy, Schneiderlin. Booked: Zouma. Manager: Marco Silva 6.5. MANCHESTER CITY (4-3-3): Ederson 7; Walker 6.5, Stones 7, Otamendi 7, LAPORTE 8; D Silva 7 (De Bruyne 89), Fernandinho 7, Gundogan 7; B Silva 6.5, Aguero 7 (Jesus 80), Sane 6 (Sterling 59). Subs not used: Muric, Zinchenko, Danilo, Mahrez. Scorers: Laporte 45+2, Jesus 90+7. Booked: Fernandinho. Manager: Pep Guardiola 7. Referee: Craig Pawson 6. Attendance: 39,322.