HIGH FLYERS
City first to hit 100 league goals in a year since 1982 They go 13 points clear after United hit by late shock
MANCHESTER City toyed with their prey at the Etihad yesterday.
They did not humiliate them with an avalanche of goals. They contented themselves with four.
They did not tear them to pieces. They played with them like a cat who has a mouse it cannot be bothered to kill.
They made intricate patterns with their passes and their movement and they kept the ball for minutes at a time, making Bournemouth chase and sweat and harry.
Eddie Howe packed his midfield as tightly as sardines in a tin, all in vain. City did not move out of first gear. They did not need to.
They picked them off four times, punishing a mistake on the first occasion and relying on a sublime piece of creative skill by Sergio Aguero on the second before finishing them off with two clinical late finishes.
Aguero is said to be discontented at City. If even the unhappy ones play like this, the rest of the league is i n deeper t rouble t han we thought. Just before the end, the crowd stood and gave their team a spontaneous round of applause as if they wanted to mark somehow this incredible run of victories they are witnessing. The rest of us sat and wondered when this astonishing sequence will ever end.
‘Anyone’s beatable,’ Howe said after the game but he didn’t sound too convinced. ‘We came with a plan to stay in the game as long as we could,’ he added.
That is about the extent of the ambition against Pep Guardiola’s side these days.
Something is happening here at City. History is unfolding in front of us. No one has ever started an English season like this before. It is unlikely anyone will again. Lest you forget, this team have now won 17 league games in succession. We are witnessing a phenomenon.
The rest of the division is reduced to scanning their fixture list to see when there is half a chance they might at least draw a game. City have testing away fixtures against Newcastle and Crystal Palace over the holiday period but if there is a date that might give faint hope that the runaway train might at least be temporarily slowed, it is January 14 when they visit Anfield.
After Friday night’s defensive display against Arsenal, though, no one in their right mind would stake too much money on Liverpool holding out against a side of City’s attacking riches. With City in this mood, with the machine looking so finely oiled, it is hard to see where their invincibility will be dented.
If the pressure of maintaining the winning run is on their minds, City are not showing it. ‘Sometimes you have doubts about whether mentally they will be ready to do it again and again,’ Guardiola said after the match, ‘and that was what I was most impressed about.’
The records keep falling before them. When Aguero scored City’s third yesterday, it was their 100th goal in 2017.
The last team to hit three figures in the top flight was the great Liverpool side of Bob Paisley who achieved the feat in 1982. They scored 106 that year but played more games. City are moving in rare company.
At least until Manchester United played at Leicester, the victory put City 14 points clear at the top of the Premier League. They have 55 points from their first 19 games. They have not won anything yet, so their claims to greatness will have to wait, but the pace they are setting is quite breathtaking.
Strangely enough, Bournemouth had fashioned the first clear chance of the game in the 10th minute but Junior Stanislas snatched at his shot when it was dragged back to him from the byline and damaged his hamstring in the process. It was not the most auspicious start for the visitors.
Bournemouth al ready had a considerable injury list and the forced withdrawal of Stanislas heightened the expectation that Howe’s side might be on the wrong end of a cricket score.
It was something of a surprise when they survived until midway through the first half without conceding.
They packed men behind the ball as it is only prudent to do against this City side and did their best to soak up the pressure. And all City could manage initially was a half chance that fell to Aguero and which he lifted high over the bar, a Fernandinho header from a corner that he could not keep down and a long- range drive from Nicolas Otamendi that stung the hands of Asmir Begovic.
But Bournemouth’s defiance did not last and in the 27th minute they were undone by City’s relentless pressing.
Fabian Delph intercepted a loose pass from Begovic as Bournemouth tried to work their way out of defence, David Silva flicked it back to Fernandinho and his precise cross found Aguero unmarked 10 yards out.
Aguero dived full length and guided his header past Begovic.
It was his 100th goal in all competitions for City at the Etihad. ‘Sergio Aguero is a legend,’ said Guardiola. ‘He will decide about his future and his life. I am so happy to have him here.’
Eight minutes into the second half, City went further ahead. Silva played the ball into Aguero and the Argentine, who was side-on to the goal, clipped a delightful flicked pass into the path of Sterling.
Sterling ran on to it and rammed it past Begovic from 10 yards out.
It was a beautifully fashioned goal, a reminder of how simple genius like Aguero’s can be. He may be City’s greatest-ever goalscorer but he also has the vision and the touch to provide one of the sweetest assists you will see this season.
As for Sterling, he simply cannot stop scoring. It was his 12th league goal of the season and rather a neat riposte to the moron who racially abused him outside City’s training ground last week.
Guardiola praised him to the skies. ‘Now he is enjoying taking his goalscoring opportunities,’ the City boss said, ‘whereas in the past he was a bit scared.’
City turned the rest of the match into a training game and made Bournemouth chase shadows. Ten minutes from time, Aguero added a third when he ran on to a superb cross from substitute Bernardo Silva and powered another unstoppable header past Begovic.
Second- half substitute Danilo administered the coup de grace with a fine low finish in the dying minutes. The juggernaut rolls on.