Liverpool spree ends City’s bid for perfection
Manchester City’s quest to be the latest “Invincibles” of English soccer ended thanks to nine minutes of mayhem on Sunday.
Hounded and harassed by Liverpool’s high press inside a raucous Anfield, City fell apart through a series of defensive mistakes and went from being level at 1-1 after 59 minutes to trailing 4-1 in the 68th minute.
City defender Kyle Walker rubbed his face in disbelief. Manager Pep Guardiola looked at the ground in shock.
City recovered admirably to lose 4-3, but its five-month, 22-match unbeaten start to the league is over. Arsenal’s undefeated Premier League season in 2003-04 won’t be emulated for at least another year. Preston was the other team to go through a top-flight season unbeaten, in 1888-89.
“We lost a little bit of our control,” Guardiola said of the atmosphere. “We were involved in the environment of Anfield for many, many reasons.”
This was seen as the toughest test in City’s final 16 games of the season — the team hasn’t won at Anfield since 2003 — and so it proved. Liverpool was without the departed Philippe Coutinho and injured new signing Virgil van Dijk, but showed once again that there is no more dangerous team in matches between members of England’s “Big 6.”
Liverpool’s effervescent front three — Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah — all scored, as did the man who might replace Coutinho in its so-called “Fab 4” attack, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
The win moved Liverpool level on points with Chelsea and second-place Manchester United, with all three teams 15 points behind City. United can reduce the gap to 12 points by beating Stoke on Monday.
Arsenal’s class of 2003-04 remains in a league of its own but, 14 years on, the north London team is in disarray.
Arsene Wenger’s team lost 2-1 at Bournemouth, on the day the departure of Alexis Sanchez looked closer with Arsenal dropping the forward for the trip to the south coast. Wenger later said Sanchez’s future would be sorted “in the next 48 hours” as City and United vie for his services.
Arsenal is in sixth place, eight points off Champions League qualification.
French league ref strikes back
PARIS (AP) — A bizarre foul committed by the referee overshadowed Paris Saint-Germain’s 1-0 win on Sunday at Nantes, which moved the leaders 11 points clear at the top of the French league.
In a highly unusual end to the game, referee Tony Chapron sent off Nantes center half Diego Carlos in the last minute — although the official was the culprit.
“It’s a joke ... Honestly, the whole of Europe is laughing here,” Nantes president Waldemar Kita said after the game. “The player is on the receiving end and it’s him who gets a [red] card. There’s a problem here.”
Carlos was running behind Chapron near the halfway line and trying to catch up with play when he inadvertently clipped the referee’s heels as their paths crossed.
Chapron tumbled forward onto the turf and then, in what appeared to be a blatant act of retribution, swiped his right leg at Carlos.
An irate Chapron got up and brandished a second yellow card for Carlos, and looked flustered as he fumbled in his shirt pocket for the red.