Manchester City ended the weekend fifth in the Premier League table after a 1-0 victory over Brentford that marked Pep Guardiola\u2019s 250th win in England\u2019s top flight since his arrival in 2016. The decisive moment began with Jo\u0161ko Gvardiol\u2019s long ball forward that drew the Brentford centre backs toward their own goal. Erling Haaland latched onto the pass and used strength, pace and clever feet to drive through before a left-footed finish. Haaland had been on 11 goals in eight games so far this season prior to kick-off.<\/p>\n
City dealt with an early injury to Rodri. The 2024 Ballon d\u2019Or winner had a grave look on his face that hints at another frustrating setback. Despite that loss, Phil Foden and Oscar Bobb found promising pockets on City\u2019s right; Foden dragged a shot wide from a good position about half an hour in. Soon after, Brentford were denied what should have been a second City goal when Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher produced a strong reflex save to stop Tijjani Reijnders at the far post.<\/p>\n
Brentford began the second half with a vigour that had been missing and nearly drew level when Igor Thiago found a one-on-one opportunity, only for Gianluigi Donnarumma to make an alert stop. The visitors created a spell of pressure after the interval but produced only blocked or off-target attempts. City\u2019s chance creation faded from the dominant first half, yet there was rarely any sense of real jeopardy for Guardiola\u2019s side. At the death Kevin Schade charged down an attempted clearance and the rebounding ball did not trouble the goal.<\/p>\n
Man City player ratings (out of 10):
\nGK: Gianluigi Donnarumma 8.1
\nRB: Matheus Nunes 7.8
\nCB: R\u00faben Dias (c) 8.0
\nCB: Jo\u0161ko Gvardiol 8.1
\nLB: Nico O\u2019Reilly 7.9
\nDM: Rodri 6.8
\nRM: Oscar Bobb 7.8
\nCM: Tijjani Reijnders 7.6
\nCM: Phil Foden 7.6
\nLM: Savinho 6.7
\nST: Erling Haaland 7.8
\nSUB: Nico Gonz\u00e1lez (22\u2019 for Rodri) 7.3
\nSUB: J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku (76\u2019 for Bobb) 5.8
\nSUB: Bernardo Silva (76\u2019 for Reijnders) 6.5
\nSubs not used: James Trafford (GK), John Stones, Nathan Ak\u00e9, Rico Lewis, Mateo Kova\u010di\u0107, Rayan Cherki.<\/p>\n
Brentford (5-3-2): Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher; Michael Kayode, Kristoffer Ajer, Sepp van den Berg, Nathan Collins (c), Aaron Hickey; Yehor Yarmolyuk, Jordan Henderson, Mikel Damsgaard; Igor Thiago, Kevin Schade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola reached 250 Premier League wins as City beat Brentford 1-0; Haaland finished clinically.!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[728,1056,969],"tags":[1064,1068,1040],"class_list":["post-3576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brentford","category-man-city","category-premier-league","tag-ballon-dor-2","tag-dominance","tag-donnarumma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}