Man City 1-0 Southampton: Haaland inspires city win
Man City 1-0 Southampton: Haaland inspires city win. Manchester City go top of the premier league table at the moment, courtesy of Erling Haaland‘s sole goal in a hard-fought 1-0 win at home to Southampton on Saturday afternoon.
An oddly subdued contest was played almost entirely in Southampton’s half, although the confident visitors had plenty of the ball as well. There wasn’t much for the Etihad to shout about as both sides took it in turns to stroke the ball around without much purpose.
A late flurry from the visitors sent a belated ripple of nerves throughout the home crowd, but City held on to move ahead of Liverpool at the Premier League table before the Reds play Arsenal on Sunday.
How the game unfolded;
The match wasn’t even five minutes old by the time Haaland fired City in front. Southampton’s experienced centre-back Jan Bednarek was so fearful of the burly number nine that he wasn’t even looking at the ball, focussed instead on wrestling his opponent in the middle of the box. Haaland kept his eyes fixed on Matheus Nunes’ cross, flinging his left foot forward while Bednarek hauled him backwards.
Haaland lost the stitching in his torn shirt sleeve, but emerged from the scuffle with a goal to end his three-game drought.
Russell Martin told his Southampton players ahead of the match to “express yourselves” and “play with courage” against the fearsome champions. The Saints admirably tried to fulfil their manager’s daunting brief, bravely constructing intricate passing schemes inside their own penalty area.
The newly promoted outfit managed to bypass City’s press on multiple occasions, but they needed too many players for the proposed buildup, leaving Cameron Archer to plough a lonesome furrow at the sharp end of the pitch. The nippy striker almost singlehandedly stunned City, evading the hosts’ offside trap to run half the length of the pitch and blast the ball against Ederson’s crossbar on the cusp of half-time.
The rattling of the woodwork and perhaps a few sharp words from Pep Guardiola, lit a fire under City during the interval. Phil Foden fired off a shot within 30 seconds of kick-off (which Southampton had taken), Haaland had two headers scrambled off the line and slotted one effort from point-blank range wide. It took the Etihad several seconds to compute his miss.
Haaland didn’t add to his tally, despite racking up eight efforts on the day, but one goal proved enough for City to extend their unbeaten record to 32 Premier League games.
