Manchester City, last season’s champions, returned to victory following beating Brentford 2-2 on Wednesday in the twenty-fourth stage of the English football championship, while Southampton inflicted Tottenham’s first league loss under Italian coach Antonio Conte with a 3-2 win at home.
City raised their tally to 60 points from 48 for Liverpool, who have two games postponed, one of them on Thursday once morest Leicester City.
Manchester City had 12 consecutive Premier League victories before falling to a 1-1 draw with Southampton in the previous stage. They have not lost in the last 14 games in the domestic league.
Riyad Mahrez opened the scoring for City with a penalty following Raheem Sterling blocked inside the area five minutes before half-time.
Brentford keeper David Raya made a huge mistake when he slid the ball towards Sterling and the latter hit a powerful ball that was repelled by the keeper but set up for the Belgian playmaker, Kevin De Bruyne, who followed it into the net from close range, boosting Manchester City’s lead.
Slap Spurs
In north London, Tottenham failed to capitalise on Manchester United’s fall to last-place Burnley on Tuesday, losing at home to Southampton 2-3 following being twice ahead.
Tottenham took the lead with friendly fire by Southampton’s Polish defender Jan bendark, but the southern team equalised with Albanian Armando broja on loan from Chelsea.
Tottenham have taken the lead once more with South Korean Heung-Min Son returning from injury.
But Southampton stunned Tottenham with two quick goals by Norwegian international Mohamed Elyounoussi and Scotland’s Che adamse two minutes later.
Tottenham supporters thought Dutch winger Steven bergwen had given them the equaliser in the fourth minute of stoppage time but his goal did not count for offside following resorting to Video Assistant Referee technology.
The loss is Conte’s first in the domestic league since he took over as the successor to Portuguese Nono Espirito Santo last November.
Son, who scored Tottenham’s second goal, said following the game: “it’s a disappointing result, especially as we went ahead in the game at home.
“We suffered a lot in the first half but we created some chances. “In the second half the team improved and we managed to get ahead but we made the same mistake twice at the end of the game and Southampton took advantage of that to score two goals.
