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MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Phil Foden led Manchester City’s comeback after a Erling Haaland’s surprising mistake for a 3-1 victory over Manchester United in a one-sided derby that exposed the gulf between the two Premier League rivals on Sunday.
City trailed 1-0 at halftime after a powerful long-range shot from Marcus Rashford in the eighth minute and a flagrant miss from the prolific Haaland from just two meters away.
Foden succeeded where Haaland failed previously, hitting a rising shot for the equalizer in the 56th and then hitting a low shot in the 80th minute off an inside pass from Julián Álvarez.
“I always had the feeling that I would score goals. At the moment, he is winning games,” City manager Pep Guardiola said of Foden, the 23-year-old English striker whose brace took him to 17 goals this season in all competitions, a career-high.
“He is the player of the season…no one has been as decisive for us as him this season.”
There was still time for Haaland to make amends, taking advantage of a defensive mistake to score the third goal in stoppage time with City’s 27th shot of the game.
Haaland collapsed to the ground feigning relief after his goal, his league-high 18th of the campaign, after celebrating with Foden. The pair each scored a hat-trick in City’s 6-3 victory over United last season and once again hurt their rivals.
Second-place City have fallen one point behind Liverpool with 11 games left in a title race that looks set to go down to the wire. If Arsenal beat Sheffield United on Monday as expected, the gap between the top three title contenders will once again be two points.
Meanwhile, United have lost ground in the fight for Champions League qualification. With Saturday’s victory for fourth-place Aston Villa and fifth-place Tottenham, United are now six points behind Spurs and 11 behind Villa.
The lopsided nature of the match showed that Jim Ratcliffe, whose Ineos operation has taken over United’s football operations as part of the the arrival of the billionaire as co-ownerHe has a lot of work ahead of him to make the club a force in English and European football again.
He spoke last week about knocking City and Liverpool “from their position” in three years. This might be optimistic based on this evidence.
United were outplayed at the Etihad Stadium, and the match was played mainly at the away ground, as if it were an FA Cup match between a top-flight team and a lower league opponent. City had 74% overall possession and United only had one shot on goal: Rashford’s goal.
Still, before Foden scored his brilliant first goal, there was a chance that United could somehow hold out. And even that goal was controversial, with United manager Erik ten Hag angry that a foul on Rashford by Kyle Walker was not awarded before City went ahead and equalised.
“(It was) maybe soft but there was contact,” Ten Hag said.
Shortly after Ten Hag threw his water bottle to the ground, Foden was unleashing a shot that flew past Andre Onana.
Another draw, two weeks after City drew 1-1 at home to Chelsea, would have been a blow to the team’s chances of an unprecedented fourth consecutive league title, but Foden and, belatedly, Haaland They made sure that wasn’t the case. .
And so City will head to Anfield for a seismic match next Sunday just behind Liverpool and with the chance to deal a major blow in the title race. City are now unbeaten in 19 games in all competitions, since a 1-0 defeat at Villa on December 6.
It is a record United can only dream of in their current state, as Ratcliffe gets to work on a mighty rebuilding task.
A positive for United was the performance of Onana, who repelled City with a series of outstanding saves in the second half and could do little against Foden’s advance.
Another was the quality of Rashford’s goal, a thunderbolt from 30 yards after a long clearance from Onana that put Bruno Fernandes behind the City defence.
From then on, however, it was all one way and United failed to stem the blue tide.
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AP Football: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
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