Villa beat Man City to go third, Liverpool shut in on Arsenal | Football News | USAEMALL.com

Manager Guardiola admits Man City are struggling, a day after claiming they’d win the Premier League.

Aston Villa have dealt a serious blow to Manchester City’s Premier League title problem as Leon Bailey clinched a 1-0 win in opposition to the reeling champions at Villa Park.

Bailey’s deflected second-half strike moved Unai Emery’s facet above spluttering City into third place on Wednesday evening.

Pep Guardiola’s fourth-placed staff have gone 4 league video games and not using a win and sit six factors behind leaders Arsenal.

After attracts with Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham, the treble winners desperately wanted to beat Villa to be in contact with the Gunners.

Instead, they produced their worst efficiency of the damaging run and will simply have misplaced by multiple purpose.

City regarded weary for lengthy intervals however with a visit to Saudi Arabia for the FIFA Club World Cup looming earlier than the hectic Christmas schedule, there’s little respite in sight.

Reacting to questions this week about City’s blip, Guardiola boldly proclaimed his staff will certainly retain the Premier League title.

The City boss gained’t be panicking but, in any case, they erased an eight-point hole to overtake Arsenal within the closing weeks of final season’s title race.

But this was a serious setback to their hopes of an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League crown.

“Aston Villa were better. They played a fantastic game, we struggled to make our process and be more aggressive,” Guardiola mentioned.

“The fact we didn’t win the last few games, that’s the quality of the Premier League. We know what’s our level. We’re struggling a bit. I’m here to help them.”

Villa’s 14th consecutive house league victory supplied extra proof of the outstanding job finished by Emery since he changed the sacked Steven Gerrard final season.

Emery’s staff look real top-four contenders and Saturday’s go to from Arsenal provides their supervisor, sacked by the Gunners in 2019, an opportunity to show some extent to his outdated membership, who’re solely 4 factors above them.

“We did a fantastic match. When you are playing Manchester City you have to get your moments and try to control the game. We created chances but it was very tough,” Emery mentioned after his first win over Guardiola on the 14th try.

Liverpool shut in on Arsenal

Elsewhere, Liverpool eased to a 2-0 victory over Sheffield United for whom Chris Wilder was again within the technical space after returning to his former membership following the sacking of Paul Heckingbottom.

Virgil van Dijk’s first-half volley and a late effort by Dominik Szoboszlai have been sufficient for Juergen Klopp’s facet who closed the hole on leaders Arsenal to 2 factors.

Arsenal, who loved a last-gasp 4-3 win at Luton Town on Tuesday, have 36 factors from 15 video games with Liverpool on 34, Villa on 32 and City within the fourth spot on 30 factors.

Manchester United bounced again from the weekend defeat by Newcastle United with Scott McTominay’s double securing a 2-1 victory in opposition to Chelsea at Old Trafford.

United sit at sixth place on the desk with 27 factors, three behind City and Chelsea are tenth with 19 factors.

The strain is mounting on Nottingham Forest supervisor Steve Cooper after his facet slumped to a 5-0 defeat at Fulham whereas Bournemouth eased additional away from the relegation locations with a 2-0 victory at sliding Crystal Palace.

Eighth-placed Brighton & Hove Albion beat Brentford 2-1.