Manchester City moved closer to winning the Premier League title with a crucial 2-1 win over Newcastle yesterday, thanks to two goals from Nico O’Reilly.
According to AFP, O’Reilly gave City the lead in the first half at the Etihad Stadium, and then Lewis Hall tied the game.
Pep Guardiola’s team wasn’t at its best, but they held on to win, which brought them within two points of Arsenal at the top of the table.
The Gunners are going to Tottenham today, but no matter what happens in the north London derby, City is in charge of the title.
After this weekend, they will have a game in hand on Arsenal and will face Mikel Arteta’s team in April. If they win their next 11 games, they would win Guardiola’s seventh title.
Guardiola said on Friday that he “couldn’t care less” about Arsenal’s recent loss, which made the title chase more exciting.
Arsenal has only won two of their past seven league games, but City is getting hot at precisely the perfect time.
Their fifth straight win in all competitions kept their unbeaten streak going for eight games.
This was the fourth time City and Newcastle have played each other this season. They will play each other again in the last 16 of the FA Cup next month.
Newcastle have never won in 20 prior trips to the Etihad Stadium in the Premier League. They also lost there in the League Cup semi-finals this season.
Newcastle had to make a 5,000-mile round trip to Baku for their Champions League play-off first leg against Qarabag on Wednesday. They had to convince the Premier League to change their travel to Manchester from its initial early time slot to Saturday evening.
A tense ending
City didn’t waste any time testing Newcastle’s tiredness with a fast start.
Their early pressure paid off when they scored a great goal in the 14th minute.
Erling Haaland flipped the ball to Omar Marmoush, who made a smart pass to O’Reilly. O’Reilly then moved to the edge of the box and hit a powerful shot past Nick Pope.
In Newcastle’s 6-1 win over Qarabag, Anthony Gordon scored four goals. The England attacker almost equalized right away with a hard shot that Gianluigi Donnarumma saved.
City was just too open at the back all game long, and they got hit with a sucker punch in the 22nd minute.
They messed up clearing a corner, and Hall took advantage of it with a shot from the edge of the area that hit City defender Rayan Ait-Nouri hard and went past Donnarumma, who was on the wrong foot.
Five minutes later, Guardiola’s team took the lead again.
Antoine Semenyo picked out Haaland, who sent a great cross into the Newcastle area. O’Reilly timed his move perfectly to head the ball down past Pope from close range.
After the break, Hall almost scored a second equalizer with a daring shot that went just wide, getting a thumbs-up from Donnarumma.
Guardiola was angry that City couldn’t finish off Newcastle, so he told his team to “keep the ball better” as he walked along the touchline.
The City manager’s blood pressure went up again when Semenyo shot weakly at Pope from a promising spot, but City held on until the end to keep the pressure on Arsenal.
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