Manchester City shrugged off a tight turnaround from defeat at Wolves to beat Sheffield United 2-0 on Sunday thanks to second-half strikes from Sergio Aguero and Kevin de Bruyne.
City boss Pep Guardiola had lambasted the scheduling that saw the English champions kick off less than 48 hours after playing the majority of Friday’s 3-2 defeat at Molineux with 10 men.
Fatigue seemed to get the better of City in the first half as the Blades enjoyed the better of the chances and had a Lys Mousset goal ruled out after a VAR review for offside. However, the greater individual quality at Guardiola’s disposal decided the game as de Bruyne teed up Aguero to smash into the roof of the net seven minutes after the break.
de Bruyne then rounded off another excellent display by scoring the second himself with a fine finish eight minutes from time to inflict United’s first defeat away from home for nearly a year and bring City back to within 14 points of runaway Premier League leader Liverpool.
Liverpool needed the aid of VAR to re-establish its 13-point lead at the top of the Premier League with a 1-0 win over Wolves on Sunday.
Sadio Mane scored the only goal of a controversial clash at Anfield as Liverpool extended its unbeaten run at home in the league to 50 games.
Mane’s strike three minutes before half-time was initially ruled out for a handball by Adam Lallana in the build-up, but a VAR review overturned referee Anthony Taylor’s on-field decision.
Moments later Wolves thought they had levelled when Pedro Nieto fired low past Alisson Becker, but again the VAR review went against the visitors as the goal was ruled out for a fractional offside against Jonny.
The results : Manchester City 2 (Aguero 52, de Bruyne 82) bt Sheffield United 0; Liverpool 1 (Mane 42) bt Wolves 0 .
