Manchester City held on to beat Southampton 2-1 for their first Premier League win since October, but Sergio Aguero suffered yet another injury.
Advertisement
Southampton rallied with a header from Shane Long shortly after half-time but City’s wobble was ended by De Bruyne setting up Aleksandar Kolarov for a third after 79 minutes.
Sergio Aguero gave City’s fans concern when he hobbled off mid-way through the second half, but Pellegrini said that his substitution was merely “a precaution”.
“I was very pleased with the team’s reaction”. We just won one point from six [in the Premier League] so it was very important to win against a hard team that was unbeaten away.
But the hosts went in front in the ninth minute when Raheem Sterling robbed Maya Yoshida and crossed for De Bruyne to tap home from close range with the goalkeeper stranded. “Yeah – I’m more direct than him, he can keep the ball a little bit more than me so the two together, that’s an advantage – we can switch different things”, he said.
“If you want to be involved in the title race you can not drop more points at home”.
In a worrying sign for City, though, Aguero limped off with an apparent ankle injury an hour in, although the team did get a boost when David Silva came off the bench after a nine-game injury layoff.
Manchester City bounced back from last weekend’s 4-1 hammering at the hands of Liverpool, with the Citizens running out deserved 3-1 winners against Southampton. We didn’t play that much together, maybe two times, so then it’s really hard for both of us [to have an understanding].
“He has a pain in his heel”.
But Pellegrini said: “He took a kick on the heel and we’ll see tomorrow how it is”.
The 20th minute saw Fernandinho’s header turned deliberately round the post by the elbow of Steven Davis, but the referee thought it hit his body rather than his arm, awarding a corner rather than a penalty and a red card.
“We had the best chance to score (and make it) 2-2 from (Dusan) Tadic and had some other counter-attacks stopped by the referee, but 3-1 killed the game”.
Sunderland climbed out of the relegation zone with their second win this week, following up Monday’s 1-0 victory at Palace with a 2-0 win over Stoke City who had Ryan Shawcross sent off in the second half.
Advertisement
Saints improved in the second half and soon halved the deficit.
