Haaland equals 38 game Premier League goalscoring record with 3-1 victory over Leicester.
- Haaland scores a brace to equal Mo Salah’s record of 32 goals in a 38 game Premier League season.
- Manchester City go 4 points behind Arsenal with 1 game in hand after West Ham draw.
Manchester City lined up with; Ederson, Walker, Stones, Laporte, Dias, Rodri, Silva, De Bruyne, Grealish, Haaland, Mahrez.
Manchester City welcome to 19th place Leicester City to the Etihad Stadium on this 5:30pm kickoff in the Premier League with Manchester City looking to close the gap on Arsenal at the top of the league who were to face West Ham on the Sunday game where they did end up dropping 2 crucial points in this head-to-head title race.
Manchester City start off the game in complete control and we saw something that hasn’t happened in a while, an early opener from the Champions.
5 minutes into the game, the centre back of the team, John Stones scores from the edge of the box with a left-footed volley which travels past the goalkeeper to make it 1-0 to the home side.
After this rare early start from city, they didn’t change up their playstyle as they carried on piling the pressure onto Leicester and only 6 minutes later, Grealish plays a ball into the away sides’ box where it strikes the hand of the Leicester midfielder. After a look at VAR, the penalty is awarded.
Who else but Haaland steps up to take the penalty and perfectly places it into the right-side netting of the goal making it near impossible for the keeper to save. 2-0 to City.
Once again, the pressure just rises and rises when Manchester City are in flow state. In the 25th minute, Kevin De Bruyne finds a pass into the Norwegian record breaker, and Haaland slots it over the keeper in a cool and composed finish against this crumbling Leicester side. 3-0 to City.
The game then slows the pace, fortunately for the away side as the first half ends 3-0 to Manchester City with the home side in complete control.
Manchester City make 2 half time substitutions with the second leg of their champions league quarter final tie against Bayern Munich coming up on Wednesday 19th of April.
Guardiola decides to rest Haaland and Stones for this tie, 2 very important to City’s success this season.
With the main threat in Haaland off the pitch, the game does slow down significantly and City just maintain possession with their 3-goal cushion to rely on.
In the 60th minute, Guardiola brings De Bruyne and Rodri off of the field for a rest before the massive tie on Wednesday. Removing these two players from the field changes Manchester City’s style of play drastically as they lose 2 of their midfield maestros.
Once again, Guardiola turns to his bench as he takes Jack Grealish off and brings on summer signing Sergio Gomez as his replacement in the 74th minute.
However, this substitution turned out to be the wrong one as 1 minute after this sub, ex-city player Iheanacho grabs a goal back for the away side with this City team changing 5 of their players since the 3 goals hit the back of the net.
However, despite Leicester looking to take advantage of this, the Champions remained solid in their defense and didn’t concede again in this tie leaving the final score 3-1 to Manchester City.
Despite being replaced at half time, Erling Haaland receives Man of the Match for his brace.
Manchester City’s next game is the second leg of the Bayern Munich tie in the Champions League where they are up 3-0 after the first leg in Manchester.