City Maintain Winning Streak Ahead Of Liverpool Showdown

Manchester City remained on track for their title showdown with Liverpool at Anfield next week in spite of being outplayed for the first half by Southampton.

Even Manuel Pellegrini admitted the visitors were the better team before the interval, while Mauricio Pochettino chose his words carefully after complaining that “dumb refereeing decisions” helped to swing the game City’s way.

“Two decisions killed the game,” the Southampton manager said. “I don’t think you can award a penalty like that after just two minutes and for the second goal the City player was clearly offside.

”It is better that I don’t repeat what I said to the referee at the end, but the only consolation we can take is that for 45 minutes we were superior to a team that might go on to win the Premier League.”That much is true, and though Pochettino weakened his case by grumbling about a penalty that one of his own players needlessly gave away.

Southampton gave Manchester City a start by conceding the most stupid of penalties after just two minutes, then diligently clawed their way back to deservedly equalise through a penalty of their own, despite seeing Jay Rodriguez carried off on a stretcher at the height of their dominance.

The forward fell awkwardly and damaged his right knee badly enough to jeopardise any World Cup plans the watching Roy Hodgson might have been forming, then in the four minutes added to the first half for the treatment Rodriguez received, City scored twice.

Considering the first of those goals involved one of the worst line calls of the season, with David Silva at least two yards offside when he received the ball to set up Samir Nasri, Southampton could consider themselves doubly unfortunate.

Pochettino’s team had only themselves to blame for the opening goal, however. When Edin Dzeko went past José Fonte in the area the centre-back hung out a leg for him to trip over in a manner rarely seen outside playground kickarounds. Yaya Touré accepted the opportunity to put City ahead from the penalty spot.

Pablo Zabaleta gave away a penalty against Jack Cork and Lambert beat Joe Hart from the spot with a confident accuracy that could only have impressed the England manager in the stand.

Then, just as the board went up showing four extra minutes, City found their attacking focus. Touré, Dzeko and Silva linking effortlessly for the last to leave Nasri a tap-in with an unselfish square ball.

If that was hard on the Saints worse was to come, when Nasri showed good awareness to free Aleksandar Kolarov for a run down the left and a cross that Dzeko met perfectly on the six-yard line.

The second half was bound to be anticlimactic, though there were a few high points.

City found a way to score a fourth by legitimate means, Jesús Navas sending over such an inviting cross from the right that even though the Negredo could not quite reach it at the near post it still provided a far-post opportunity for recently arrived substitute Stevan Jovetic.