PHIL YOUR BOOTS
Foden makes Reds wait for title but Dyche despairs as Burnley implode
LIVERPOOL must wait until at least a week on Thursday to seal the Premier League title after Phil Foden ripped through Burnley last night.
Manchester City cut Liverpool’s lead to 20 points, meaning Jurgen Klopp’s side can’t be crowned champions even if they beat Crystal Palace tomorrow.
They must wait until their trip to City next week to have a chance of winning the title for the first time since 1990.
THE best players play not just with skill but with pride, too. Pep Guardiola was always like that and so it seems are his Manchester City team. At City, you either play as though every game is your last or you just don’t play at all.
So that is why anyone who thought City were going to restart the Premier League season with one eye on the FA Cup and the other on the Champions League were always likely to be proved wrong.
City are the English champions, remember. They do not wish to lose that title to Liverpool by a margin as long as the East Lancs Road. Why would they? That would be embarrassing. It is this that drives them onwards now. It is this that has helped them score eight goals in two games since the resumption of play and you can be sure they will now have another win at Chelsea in mind on Thursday. If they pull that off they will then host Liverpool here next week with the chance to prove something.
Would a win over Jurgen Klopp’s champions-elect next week be hollow, given that everyone has known since Christmas exactly where the trophy is going? Not to Guardiola and his players it wouldn’t. Not only would it delay Liverpool’s coronation a little longer, it would also lay down a marker ahead of next season.
This is how top players think. These things matter. It was Burnley’s misfortune to get in the way of that ambition here and they hardly helped themselves with a woeful contribution. With Sean Dyche in a grump with his board over player contracts, it could be argued Burnley were sitting ducks here anyway.
Once they fell behind midway through the first half they pretty much came apart and by the time the hour came and went they were four goals down and heading for a horrible hiding. By that time, Burnley had not had an attempt on goal.
Guardiola has made much of the difficulties of planning for such a hectic fixture schedule and his most articulate point was made here via his selection. Eight changes from last week’s win over Arsenal said everything. This was still some team, mind. No matter that Liverpool are about to prove themselves to have had the best first XI this season, City still have the deepest squad.
Burnley had issues too and they were harder to mask. Manager Dyche has expressed recent frustration that a clutch of players have not been offered the opportunity by the club to extend contracts that expire in 10 days. With that in mind, none of them were included in the squad for this game and, given that Burnley have injury problems also, it meant this was a depleted team and a bench that included two goalkeepers and numbered only seven players rather than the permitted nine under the rules of restart.
So that was a mess and it gave the visiting team a heck of a mountain to climb at the Etihad. During the course of the first half Burnley were vastly inferior in terms of possession and territory and it was no surprise at all that they were three goals down by the end of the first 45 minutes.
A little like they did when beating Arsenal, City started relatively slowly and improved to such an extent that by the time we had played half an hour they were functioning very nicely indeed.
There was only real chance created in the first 20 minutes and with it Bernardo Silva should have scored. His namesake David broke through the middle and when he slid the ball to his right, Silva should have done better than slash a shot wide of the near post.
Burnley were energetic as they always are but did look desperately limited when they had the ball. They were not being run ragged as the first drinks break approached but things changed when Phil Foden received the ball from a short corner in the 22nd minute and drove a low shot past Nick Pope’s left hand into the corner. It was a pure strike and it signalled a change in the feel of the game. As though a switch had been flicked, City began to play with much greater purpose and it was hard to see how Burnley were to keep them at bay.
Ultimately the damage was done in the five minutes before the end of the first half. A diagonal pass from central defender Fernandinho in the 43rd minute was controlled beautifully on the run by Riya Mahrez and he was able to turn Burnley’s Charlie Taylor inside out before driving a low shot across Pope and into the far corner.
With Burnley struggling they needed half-time badly. Before they got there, though, the VAR officials spotted a foul by Ben Mee on Sergio Aguero in added time and Mahrez slotted home the penalty. Aguero seemed to take a heavy knock in the challenge, though, and was immediately replaced by Gabriel Jesus.
Soon it got worse for Burnley. Foden, playing superbly, slid a lovely reverse ball in to Bernardo Silva and his low cross was turned in by David Silva from six yards. Then the young England prospect scored his own second, left-footed at the far post in the 64th minute.
MANCHESTER CITY (4-3-2-1): Ederson 6; Cancelo 6, Fernandinho 6.5 (Laporte 60min), Otamendi 6.5, Zinchenko 6; FODEN 8 (Sane 79), Rodri 7, D Silva 7; Mahrez 7.5 (De Bruyne 60, 6), Bernardo 6.5; Aguero 6 (Jesus 45). Subs not used: Walker, Sterling, Gundogan, Mendy, Carson. Scorers: Foden 22, 63, Mahrez 43, 45+3 (pen), D Silva 51. Booked: Cancelo. Manager: Pep Guardiola 8. BURNLEY (4-4-2): Pope 6; Lowton 6, Tarkowski 6, Mee 6, Taylor 5.5; Brownhill 5.5, Westwood 5.5, Cork 5.5, McNeil 5; Rodriguez 5 (Pieters 59), Vydra 5 (Thompson 88). Subs not used: Peacock-Farrell, Long, Dunne, Thomas, Jensen. Booked: Brownhill. Manager: Sean Dyche 5. Referee: Andre Marriner 6.