Spurs sink City • Liverpool surges on • Leicester and Chelsea draw
LONDON (Reuters) – Steven Bergwijn made an instant impact on his Tottenham Hotspur debut with a stunning opener in his side’s 2-0 win over defending champion Manchester City in an incident-packed Premier League game on Sunday.
The Dutch midfielder, signed this week from PSV Eindhoven, swept home a right-foot volley three minutes after City had been reduced to 10 men when Oleksandr Zinchenko was shown a second yellow card on the hour.
With City stretched Son Heung-min added a second in the 71st minute with a deflected effort, allowing Spurs manager Jose Mourinho to get the better of his old adversary Pep Guardiola for only the sixth time in 23 clashes.
City remains far behind runaway leader Liverpool and only had itself to blame for a sixth defeat of the season as it wasted several gilt-edged chances and missed yet another penalty when Hugo Lloris saved Ilkay Gundogan’s spot kick.
While City’s pursuit of Liverpool has long run out of steam, a second successive league win revived Tottenham’s push for a top-four finish. Spurs moved up to fifth in the table, four points behind London rivals Chelsea.
In Sunday’s only other match, Arsenal was held to a goalless draw at
Burnley, and Mikel Arteta’s Gunners can count themselves lucky to leave with a point as Jay Rodriguez and Jeff Hendrick missed golden chances for Burney to win a match it dominated for large stretches.
Liverpool, meanwhile, quickened its march towards a first English title in 30 years as it stretched its lead at the Premier League summit to a staggering 22 points with a 4-0 win over Southampton at Anfield on Saturday.
Liverpool increased the gap at the top with a Mohamed Salah double leading a second-half blitz that secured a record-equaling 20th straight home league win.
In the Premier League era, only City between March 2011 and 2012 had previously enjoyed such a winning streak at home, with unbeaten Liverpool now the first English team ever to win 24 of its first 25 matches in a top-flight league campaign.
With the European champion on an unprecedented 73 points for this stage of the season, its distant chasers could only drift further behind with third-place Leicester City and Chelsea, which is fourth, drawing 2-2 in an entertaining contest.
The 22-point lead is the biggest, at any stage of any season, in English soccer annals.
At the other end of the table, stranded Norwich City drew 0-0 at Newcastle United while 19th-place Watford was left crestfallen after Everton fought from two goals down at Vicarage Road to win 3-2 despite playing the last 20 minutes with 10 men.
West Ham United dropped into the bottom three after Brighton & Hove Albion recovered from 3-1 down to earn a 3-3 draw, while Aston Villa is teetering above the drop zone after a 2-1 defeat at Bournemouth, which played most of the second half a man down.
The results mean Liverpool needs 21 points from its remaining 13 fixtures to be mathematically sure of winning its first title since 1990.
In contrast, Liverpool’s old foe Manchester United lumbered on, still low on confidence, with not even the introduction of major January capture Bruno Fernandes inspiring anything other than a prosaic 0-0 home draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The stalemate saw the Red Devils slip to sixth on 35 points, one behind Sheffield United, which won 1-0 at Crystal Palace courtesy of a goalkeeping howler from Vicente Guaita, who dropped the ball into his own net when making a hash of collecting a corner.
The performance of the day was surely Everton’s comeback at Vicarage Road, where two first-half stoppage time goals from defender Yerry Mina saw the Toffees claw back Watford’s advantage as new manager Carlo Ancelotti, it seems, is already working wonders.
Even after Everton midfielder Fabian Delph was dismissed for a second yellow card foul after 70 minutes, Theo Walcott earned a 90th minute-winner on the counter-attack.