Man City go seven points clear; Liverpool’s Klopp concedes title
ILKAY Guendogan continued his scoring streak as Manchester City beat Tottenham Hotspur 3-0 on Saturday to go seven points clear at the top of the Premier League.
The Germany midfielder took his league tally to 11 goals, adding the second and third after Rodri had put City ahead from the penalty spot to give his side a record 16th straight win.
City are now seven points ahead of Leicester, who moved above Manchester United into second after a 3-1 win over champions Liverpool, whose manager Juergen Klopp conceded his side’s defence of the title is over.
Burnley won 3-0 at Crystal Palace while Brighton meet Aston Villa in the last match of the day.
Guendogan won the penalty for Rodri to give City the lead on 23 minutes before adding the second and third goals in the 50th and 66th minutes, to leave Tottenham still eighth. City are now 13 points ahead of Liverpool, with a game in hand, a lead too big to chase down, according to the champions’ manager.
“I can’t believe (the question), but yes,” Klopp said, when asked if the title chase was over.
“I don’t think we can close that gap this year. “We are not worrying or whatever about the title, we are not silly.
We have on Tuesday a tough game (away to RB Leipzig
in the Champions League) and then on Saturday again, a derby, so these are the things we are thinking about. We want to have still a good season in the end, we have to win.” Liverpool played well for 75 minutes at Leicester and led through Mo Salah’s brilliantly-taken goal midway through the second half.
But seven minutes of madness turned the match on its head.
First, after Thiago gave away a free kick on the edge of the area - eventually confirmed by video review (VAR) James Maddison fired the free
kick into the net, a goal given by VAR after it was initially ruled out for offside against Daniel Amartey.
For the second match in succession, Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson then made a massive mistake in a mix-up with debutant defender Ozan Kabak, allowing Jamie Vardy to run in on an empty goal.
Harvey Barnes finished things off with a clinical third goal, leaving Liverpool with a third straight Premier League defeat.
Liverpool full back Andy Robertson said the result was “a huge blow”.
“We played with a lot of confidence for large parts of the game - played the ball really well,” he said. “Then I don’t know what happened in the last 10-15 minutes. It can’t happen in a game like this. We really need to look at that. Every game is massive for us now. We need to put an end to it.” Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers was delighted with the win over his former club.
“It was a very good win, the players deserved it,” he said.
“We didn’t sink when we went a goal behind, we stayed calm and the players were brilliant in that period - a real collective
team performance.
“You can see the improvement in the team’s mindset. Our reaction was superb.” Burnley moved up two places to 15th thanks to a 3-0 win at Crystal Palace, Johann Berg Gudmundsson, Jay Rodriguez and Matthew Lowton.
Results: Manchester City 3 (Rodri 23’ (P), Ilkay Gundogan 50’, 66’) bt Tottenham Hotspur 0; Burnley 3 (Johann Berg Guomundsson 5’, Jay Rodriguez 10’, Matthew Lowton 47’) bt Crystal Palace 0; Leicester City 3 (James Maddison 78’, Jamie Vardy 81’, Harvey Barnes 85’)
bt Liverpool 1 (M Salah 67’).