Manchester City will sleep as leader of the Premier this Saturday. Pep Guardiola’s team beat humble Luton Town (5-1) and takes advantage in the standings, putting pressure on Arsenal and Liverpool, now two points below, who will play their games this Sunday. The Catalan coach rested starters like Grealish, Foden, Bernardo and Rodrigo, thinking about the second leg of the Champions League quarterfinals against Real Madrid. A very close tie after the 3-3 at the Bernabéu. With this match in mind, but without losing sight of the fact that the league is also at stake, City went all out at the Etihad.
Aware that they could sleep as leaders tonight, City worked hard in an overwhelming start against modest Luton and in less than two minutes they had already advanced on the scoreboard. Haaland tested Kaminski’s reflexes, Doku caught the rebound and shot again, also without luck. For the second time the ball ended up at the feet of the Norwegian, whose powerful shot collided with the face of Daiki Hashioka, with so little luck for Luton that the ball ended up in the back of the net.
Guardiola’s team would not stop searching for the goal again and again, with shots from Gvuardiol, De Bruyne and Nunes, who even hit the post. The best news for Luton, who did not add any shots in the rival area in the first 45 minutes, was managing to go to half-time with only a 1-0 score on the scoreboard, as City accumulated a total of 17 shots, 6 of them on door, in a first half of a real siege.
Luton continued to resist in the second half, locked in their area and making it difficult for City to have clear chances, despite completely monopolizing possession of the ball. Finally, the second came from a corner. Kovacic connected a ball at mid-height to beat Kaminski with a powerful shot close to the post and make it 2-0.
Although the tranquility lasted a sigh for Guardiola’s team who saw how in the next action of the match Woodrow surprised the citizen defense by crashing a shot against the crossbar. But it was just a mirage and ten minutes later Onyedinma committed a very clear penalty on Doku that Haaland would be in charge of transforming into the 3-0 that left the game doomed.
Just like after 2-0, Luton reacted strongly to City’s third and this time they did so with a reward. The citizen defense fell asleep and Barkley stole the ball after poor control by Nunes, dribbled past Dias and beat Ederson to make it 3-1. An inconsequential goal for the match, and even more so when Doku rounded off the win with the fourth goal after a great individual action by the citizen footballer. And Gvardiol would still have time to make it 5-1 with a real great goal from the edge of the area.
