Manchester City thrashed Leicester City at the Etihad Stadium to stay in the title race of Premier League this season. With this win, Manchester City collected 38 points in 18 matches so far. They stayed at the third position behind Leicester City, but the difference of points is now only one. It was a big defeat for Leicester City as they could not take advantage of Liverpool’s blank game-week. Liverpool are currently at the top of the table with 49 points in 17 matches so far.
Leicester City started off the game quite well. Jamie Vardy scored the first goal of the match at the 22nd minute. Harvey Barnes provided a beautiful ball towards Jamie Vardy. Vardy’s left-footed stunner helped Leicester City to take the important lead in this match. Manchester City’s manager Pep Guardiola kept Rodri in the bench for this match. Ilkay Gundogan started in the midfield in place of him. After scoring the goal, Leicester City certainly went more defensive. Manchester City started to dominate the match from that moment. Kevin De Bruyne’s shot struck the post. The momentum was building up for Manchester City.
Manchester City got the equaliser at the 30th minute. It was a cross-field pass from Benjamin Mendy towards Riyad Mahrez. Mahrez easily dribbled past Ben Chilwell. He took a shot from the edge of the penalty box. The shot went to Goal with a deflection of Caglar Soyuncu. Caglar Soyuncu was shown a yellow card at the 35th minute for a bad foul. At the 42nd minute of the match, Ricardo Pereira tripped Raheem Sterling in the penalty box.
The referee awarded the penalty to Manchester City. Ilkay Gundogan calmly put the ball into the goal to give Manchester City the important lead in the match. Kasper Schmeichel jumped in the right direction but the ball was placed perfectly towards the bottom corner. The first half ended with a scoreline of 2-1 in favour of Manchester City at Etihad.
In the second half, Leicester City tried to make a comeback in the match. They showed some intent at the beginning of the second half. Harvey Barnes missed a golden opportunity to equalise the scoreline for Leicester City. Jamie Vardy provided a beautiful ball towards Barnes and he was completely unmarked. Still, he couldn’t finish it into a goal.
After that miss, Leicester City completely lost the touch in the match and never really recovered. At the 69th minute, a brilliant solo run of Kevin De Bruyne ended the dream of Leicester City. Kevin De Bruyne provided a brilliant ball towards Gabriel Jesus and the Brazilian centre forward tapped the goal in the goal perfectly.
Leicester City’s two full-backs were not at their best in this match. James Maddison has to play deeper and that’s why he was not able to contribute to the attack of Leicester City. It was all depending on Jamie Vardy; but as a team, Manchester City were better than Leicester. As a result of it, Manchester City won the match by a margin of 3-1 at Etihad.
