Wolves fight back to devour Man City
>>WOLVERHAMPTON: Matt Doherty scored in the 90th minute to complete Wolverhampton’s comeback from two goals down to beat 10-man Manchester City 3-2 on Friday, dealing a further blow to the champions’ faint hopes of a third consecutive Premier League title.
City are third in the standings halfway through the season, 14 points behind leaders Liverpool. Juergen Klopp’s side are 13 points ahead of Leicester with a game in hand, putting the 18-time champions in strong position to end a three-decade title drought.
“It’s not a race if you think about it,” City manager Pep Guardiola said.
“Always the goals can be avoided but sometimes it’s fatigue, it’s tiredness.’’
Wolves, who fought back from Raheem Sterling scoring twice for City, rose to fifth in the standings — two points from Chelsea in the final Champions League qualification place.
Wolves manager Nuno Espirito Santo said his team had delivered a memorable evening for their supporters.
“It was a good night, a very good night. The game was fantastic. Everything changes with City with one man less but it was very good,” he said.
Wolves winger Adama Traore added: “We fight to the death whatever the situation, whatever the difficulty, and that’s what we did today.”
City have now lost five of their opening 19 games of the season, but had coped initially after goalkeeper Ederson was sent off in the 12th minute for rushing out of the penalty area and bringing down Diogo Jota.
“It’s a lot of minutes to defend [with 10 men] and it’s sometimes difficult,’’ Guardiola said. “No regrets, they did absolutely everything to defend a result for 80 minutes and it was difficult.’’
Wolves, who also beat City 2-0 in October, became just the second team to complete a league double over Guardiola’s side, following Chelsea in 2016-17 and it was another comeback triumph for Espirito Santo’s team.
His side have now won 14 points from losing positions this season, more than any other team in the league.