ADAMS HITS A STUNNER TO SINK CITY
Adams goal brings City crashing back to earth
CHE ADAMS stunned Manchester City with an audacious 35-yard lob as Pep Guardiola’s side were brought crashing back down to earth at St Mary’s.
Three days after pouring cold water on Liverpool’s title celebrations with a 4-0 win at the Etihad, it was City’s turn to leave with red faces.
Despite a ferocious second-half bombardment, Adams’ stunning first-half strike over a backpedalling Ederson, after Oleksandr Zinchenko’s mistake, separated the sides at the final whistle.
Alex McCarthy was superb in the Saints goal with a string of brilliant stops.
BE realistic, demand the impossible, Che Guevara once said.
At St Mary’s last night a man named in his honour answered the calls of Southampton fans to do precisely that.
Three days after Manchester City had thrashed Liverpool – the Champions of England, Europe and the World – so emphatically, they arrived at the team with the worst home record in the Premier League.
A ground where Leicester had scored nine earlier in the season.This time there would be just one unlikely name on the score sheet – that of Che Adams.
Southampton’s best chance was felt to lie in the boots of Danny Ings, whose recent goalscoring form had kept him within three of Jamie Vardy at the top of the Golden Boot charts.
As it was, the early damage was done not by a striker who has been scoring like Vardy but instead one who is establishing a very similar career path.
Adams’ arrival in league football came only after spells at Oadby Town and Ilkeston – the same nonleague grounding the Leicester and England striker enjoyed. Signed by Southampton for £16million last summer, he had struggled to settle in the top flight. However, he finished his first goal for 456 days as easy as 1-2-3 – a calamitously poor pass from Oleksandr Zinchenko was swung nonchalantly into the empty net by Adams from 35 yards – exposing the fatal flaw in having a sweeper-keeper in Ederson who plays so high up the pitch. Then Joao Cancelo’s low drive for the far corner for City actually picked out Gabriel Jesus but the out-of-sorts striker could only deflect the ball yards over the bar with the goal completely open for him.
Ings, of all people, cleared off the line when Raheem Sterling’s dangerous cross just needed any sort of City toe on it and on the half-hour Fernandinho struck the foot of the post as inspired Southampton keeper Alex McCarthy kept out the follow-up from David Silva.
The second half continued in similar vein with City lacking the killer touch to drag themselves level. When
Silva ghosted through the defence in the 54th minute, again it was the Southampton goalkeeper’s giant paw of a glove which smothered his shot when really the City captain should have scored.
Inevitably, some of the six changes City manager Pep Guardiola, left, had made from the Liverpool game began to filter down from the St Mary’s Stadium stands to the touchline to be thrown into the fray.
Kevin de Bruyne and Phil Foden were the first to come on, just before the hour, as City continued to push for an equaliser.
Adams, having run his legs off, was replaced by Shane Long to warm applause from his team-mates moments later, but that was not a sign the home side had given up their attacking pretentions completely. As it was, Southampton’s No17 came close to scoring than the City version, de Bruyne.
Stuart Armstrong twice had efforts saved by Ederson as Southampton gamely looked to hit their visitors on the counter rather than just sitting back like red-andwhite traffic cones for the most expensive team in the world to play around.
Seeing Guardiola dash to grab a spare ball to keep play moving showed that this was anything but a meaningless fixture to him.
And with a terrestrial BBC audience more used to the soporific gentility of Antiques Roadshow for entertainment on a Sunday night, it was another reminder in these strange times of just what a remarkable competition the Premier League could be.