Intent to make amends for last weekend’s home humiliation at the hands of Liverpool, City exploded out of the blocks and opened Southampton up time and again in a superb start to the game. A better team than Southampton would have made City pay severely for some of their defending today.
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City have not lost more than two Premier League home games at home since 2009-10. Bony is also unlikely to play, so despite its offensive talent, Manchester City is going to have a hard time putting together a competitive offensive lineup.
“Joe Hart has a muscle injury – you never know as it depends how he improves but I think he will be out for ten days”. That system certainly makes the side more secure at the back, and they will need that here up against a front three of Sadio Mane, Shane Long and Dusan Tadic, who on their day are very much capable of punishing errors of the sort from which Liverpool profited. “Boss Koeman believes Long can lead Saints” line in Saturday’s Premier League trip to the Etihad Stadium, with 14-goal Pelle banned after picking up five bookings this term. The Italian striker was well marshalled by Stoke, but the City back four have shown more than a few signs that they are lacking in confidence in their last couple of outings, with Vincent Kompany’s authority being sorely missed.
Manchester City were clearly so impressed by one Juventus player in particular during their Champions League meeting on Wednesday that, according to Gazzetta dello Sport, they decided to make a bid for him straight after the game. We needed to bounce back – onwards and upwards.
As a result, they are no longer guaranteed top spot in Group D with one game to go ahead of next month’s draw for the last 16. From the first minute, we were hungry to win.
Hart was injured on the play and had to be replaced by Willy Caballero so Manchester City played with their back-up goalkeeper in the final minutes. “It’s a rumour I’ve had for the last two-and-a-half seasons here, so there’s no problem about that”.
But victory came at the cost of an injury to Sergio Aguero, who hobbled off in the second half, and both Leicester City and Manchester United will have designs on supplanting City when they meet later on Saturday.
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With Aguero then suffering his injury moments later, Southampton’s momentum looked to have been given a further injection with the departure of the City forward.
