Man City Roars to Victory as Haaland and De Bruyne Set New Records
1-4 SOUTHAMPTON MAN CITY: Pep Guardiola’s side cruised to a resounding victory over the Premier League’s bottom club to maintain pressure on league leaders Arsenal.
Manchester City’s dominant win cut the gap at the top of the Premier League to five points thanks to the return of Erling Haaland.
After Southampton, who knocked City out of the Carabao Cup in January, had started well, Haaland nodded home a Kevin De Bruyne cross just before halftime to put City ahead.
In the second half, Jack Grealish fired in at the second attempt to double the lead, before Haaland acrobatically volleyed in his 30th league goal of the season from Grealish’s cross.
Saints’ Sekou Mara pulled one back, but substitute Julian Alvarez, on for Haaland, quickly restored the three-goal lead.
1. Saints are alive, but they are wasteful.
In the first half, Southampton showed signs of what they wanted to do, with the lively Kamaldeen Sulemana their best hope of bothering City and, indeed, their best chance of scoring.
St Mary’s were on their feet after a lightning break, but the 21-year-old – a club record signing from Rennes in January – just seemed to run out of road to move into and room to hurt City, for whom the consistently impressive Nathan Ake had returned well.
Indeed, Sulemana seemed to sum up much of Southampton’s first-half effort.
The spirit was ready, but the execution was lacking.
Regardless of how poorly Liverpool is playing, there was a sense that if Haaland had to miss one City game due to injury in this title race, the Reds at home wouldn’t be a bad bet.
In those games, City craves control, so switching to a roving, more mobile attacking output rather than their standard No.9 allowed them to swarm all over the pitch and dominate the ball, eventually suffocating the hapless visitors.
They were always going to have the vast majority of possession here, but it was going to come down to taking chances and, more importantly, scoring that first goal that would break Southampton’s spirit.
Haaland did so just before halftime, moments after another Sulemana effort had gone wide.
He hadn’t even touched the ball before that, but he hadn’t needed to.
In the second half, he scored a stunning acrobatic effort, bringing his season tally to 30 league goals, making him the first City player to do so since Franny Lee in 1972.
More will be added soon.
De Bruyne, of course, had set up the first Haaland goal, with the Belgian recording his 100th Premier League assist when his Norwegian teammate nodded home his cross.
He is the fifth man to reach the milestone, but he has done so in the quickest time possible, reaching his century in 237 games – 56 games faster than nearest challenger Cesc Fabregas. FIFTY SIX
As a result of being on such a dominant team? Of course, but also because of his exceptional quality.
There have been few, if any, better creative midfielders in the history of the division.
Discussion about this post