{"id":714,"date":"2014-01-21T23:37:09","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T23:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=714"},"modified":"2014-01-22T06:31:41","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T06:31:41","slug":"city-look-set-for-first-trophy-under-pellegrini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/city-look-set-for-first-trophy-under-pellegrini\/","title":{"rendered":"City Look Set For First Trophy Under Pellegrini"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Manchester City eased into their first League Cup final in 38 years with a record 9-0 aggregate victory against semi-final opponents West Ham.<\/p>\n<p>Holding a seemingly impregnable 6-0 first-leg lead, City strikers Alvaro Negredo and Sergio Aguero combined to complete the formalities at Upton Park.<\/p>\n<p>Blues boss Manuel Pellegrini has targeted the unprecedented &#8216;quadruple&#8217; of winning the Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup and Champions League in his first season at the Etihad.<\/p>\n<p>As expected, City are already just 90 minutes from lifting their first trophy of the campaign after recording the biggest aggregate win in the League Cup semi-finals.<\/p>\n<p>Negredo needed just 157 seconds to open the scoring when he planted in Portuguese teenager Marcos Lopez&#8217;s pinpoint cross with the freedom of the Hammers penalty area.<\/p>\n<p>Aguero kept pace with his strike partner by pouncing on more calamitous Hammers defending to clip beyond goalkeeper Jussi Jaaskelainen. And, after collecting a neat one-two from Aguero, Negredo surged through a pair of flimsy Hammers challenges to tuck past Jaaskelainen for the third.<\/p>\n<p>City will face winners of tomorrow&#8217;s second leg semi-final between Manchester United or Sunderland at Wembley on 2 March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Manchester City eased into their first League Cup final in 38 years with a record 9-0 aggregate victory against semi-final opponents West Ham. Holding a seemingly impregnable 6-0 first-leg lead, City strikers Alvaro Negredo and Sergio Aguero combined to complete the formalities at Upton Park. Blues boss Manuel Pellegrini has targeted the unprecedented &#8216;quadruple&#8217; of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}