Haaland continues fine goalscoring form as City see off Brentford despite early blunder
Manchester City defeated Brentford 2-1 on Saturday afternoon to ensure that they will remain top of the league until at least next weekend. Another two goals from Erling Haaland (who now has 9 goals already this season) secured the victory.
This wasn’t without a nightmare start for the Blues though, as they conceded after just 23 seconds following a mistake from John Stones, whose attempted clearance fell straight to the head of Brentford’s Yoane Wissa to put the bees 1-0 up in extraordinary circumstances.
This terrible start was followed up by more shaky moments for City, with Brentford defender Nathan Collins almost scoring from a corner but denied by Ederson, who saved the blues from even more trouble.
City soon found their rhythm close to the halfway mark of the first half. Chance after chance was created and it of course wasn’t long before the scores were levelled. In the 19th minute, following a Brentford attempt to tackle Kevin De Bruyne, the ball fell to Haaland.
Haaland’s shot deflected off Ethan Pinnock and into the back of the net to bring the scores back level. Momentum was ultimately now with City, who had now found their feet following the poor start earlier.
Despite Brentford efforts to regain the lead in the moments after the goal, their efforts were quashed by the City defence and the Blues began to attack with more ferocity in anticipation to get their noses in front. New signing Savihno was particularly threatening the Brentford goal but the defence remained resilient.
Brentford would eventually be caught out though, by City goalkeeper Ederson kicking the ball out to Haaland after spotting him in an open position. Haaland was able to hold off Pinnock and dinked the ball past Goalkeeper Mark Flekken to put the Blues into the lead and putting them firmly in control.
Shortly before half time, a late challenge by Mateo Kovacic on Wissa led to a yellow card for Kovacic and an injury for Wissa, who had to be taken off in place of midfielder Kevin Schade. A major blow for Brentford.
In the second half, City remained the far more dominant side. The Blues were constantly looking for a third but the Bees held their own and managed to defend well, forcing City into having to take shots outside the box.
Near misses from Jack Grealish and Savihno frustrated City and the most agonising miss came from Haaland; with the post denying both him a third consecutive hat trick and a two-goal cushion for City.
Despite Brentford’s resilient defending and stopping City from inflicting more damage, they could not follow this up with an equaliser. Perhaps Brentford’s greatest chance of the second half came right at the very end of the game, when a free kick swung in from Bryan Mbuemo fell to the Brentford attack, but the chance was narrowly missed, much to the relief of City.
De Bruyne then gained possession of the ball and ran to the corner flag in anticipation that the final whistle would go. Following some half-hearted attempts by Brentford to regain possession and spur a late attack, the ball eventually went out and the full-time whistle went. The score ending 2-1 to City.
City’s perfect start to the Premier League season continued, with 12/12 points gained. With Liverpool’s 1-0 home defeat to Nottingham Forest, it means that City will stay top of the table and will hope to keep things this way as they face Arsenal next Sunday in what will be a highly anticipated affair.
This was Brentford’s second loss of the season, but they will remain confident going into their next games having held City to just a one goal victory and being able to take the lead in such a short amount of time.