By Richard Martin
MANCHESTER (Reuters) – Manchester City continued their imperious home form to ease to a 4-0 win over Southampton and move top of the Premier League as Chelsea and Newcastle United also enjoyed comfortable victories to show their top-four ambitions.
City, who had trounced Manchester United 6-3 last week, barely had to break stride against Southampton, with Joao Cancelo, Phil Foden and Riyad Mahrez netting before Erling Haaland struck the fourth goal to stretch his scoring streak to 10 straight matches in all competitions.
City have won all five of their Premier League games at the Etihad Stadium, scoring 24 goals in the process.
The victory took champions City top of the table with 23 points after nine matches and cranked up the pressure on early title rivals Arsenal, who host Liverpool on Sunday with the chance to reclaim the lead.
Chelsea continued to show signs of improvement under coach Graham Potter as they strolled to a 3-0 win at home to Wolves, who are without a manager after sacking Bruno Lage last week.
Former Chelsea forward Diego Costa made his first start for the visitors but Potter’s side were dominant and secured a third consecutive win in all competitions thanks to goals from Kai Havertz, Christian Pulisic and Armando Broja, moving up to fourth in the table on 16 points.
Newcastle climbed up to fifth with an emphatic 5-1 home victory over Brentford, one year and one day after the completion of their Saudi Arabia-backed takeover.
Bruno Guimaraes, a 40-million-pound arrival from Olympique Lyonnais and one of the club’s biggest signings since the takeover, scored in each half on a memorable afternoon for the club, who were languishing in the relegation zone when the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) acquired the club from previous owner Mike Ashley for a reported 300 million pounds ($333 million).
Bournemouth came from behind to beat Leicester City 2-1, scoring two goals in the space of five second-half minutes to and inflict a fifth consecutive away defeat on Brendan Rodgers’ side.
Patson Daka gave Leicester the lead in the 10th minute but Philip Billing and Ryan Christie scored in the second half to continue Bournemouth’s superb record under interim manager Gary O’Neil, who has won two games and drawn three since succeeding Scott Parker.
The result put renewed pressure on Leicester coach Rodgers, whose side are 19th in the table with only four points.
($1 = 0.9022 pounds)
(Reporting by Richard Martin; Editing by Toby Davis)
