Premier League: Manchester City, Liverpool register wins, Brentford stun Chelsea

Liverpool accomplished its 119-day mission to displace Manchester City from atop the English Premier League.

It lasted solely a matter of hours.

The establishment was in the end maintained in what’s promising to be one other gripping battle for the title between the 2 giants from northwest England after they beat relegation-threatened opponents on Saturday.

Liverpool was first up, beating third-from-last Watford 2-0 because of objectives by Diogo Jota and Fabinho to make it 10 straight victories within the league.

That meant City dropped out of first place for the primary time since December 4 — however not for lengthy.

Pep Guardiola’s crew kicked off barely half-hour later at next-to-last Burnley, took the lead after 5 minutes by way of Kevin De Bruyne, and coasted to a 2-0 victory. Ilkay Gundogan scored the opposite objective.

Liverpool and City have video games within the Champions League quarterfinals on Tuesday earlier than what might but be a decisive assembly at City’s Etihad Stadium 5 days later. One level will separate them heading into what might show to be a title-decider, with every crew having seven extra video games to play after that.

And that fits Liverpool supervisor Jurgen Klopp simply effective, together with his crew having been 14 factors behind in mid-January — albeit with video games in hand.

“I really appreciate the situation we are in,” mentioned Klopp, who has already led Liverpool to the League Cup title and the latter levels of the FA Cup and Champions League. “I informed the boys yesterday, if any person would have informed us in the summertime that finish of March, early April (we might be) within the scenario we’re in — in all competitions, received one trophy and a full squad out there — all of us would have taken it, completely.

“The only better situation would have been — because in the cup competitions we couldn’t be further — if we are 20 points ahead of City, but that’s not possible actually.”

As for City supervisor Guardiola, he urged his gamers to embrace the stress.

“Every game, if we lose, we are not going to win (the title), simple as that,” Guardiola mentioned.

“Hopefully Liverpool are going to lose against us — apart from that I don’t think they will drop points. We have to feel the pressure, we have to handle it. What we did in the past, when we won 14 games in a row, now we have to win eight, otherwise we will not be champions.”

ERIKSEN SCORES AGAIN

If third-placed Chelsea had any faint ambitions of catching the highest two, they had been certainly extinguished after conceding 4 second-half objectives in a shocking 4-1 residence loss to London rival Brentford.

One of Brentford’s scorers at Stamford Bridge was Christian Eriksen, who netted the second for his first objective within the Premier League since getting back from struggling a cardiac arrest eventually yr’s European Championship. He additionally scored in back-to-back video games for Denmark over the worldwide break.

Chelsea — up on the market and beset by unrelenting takeover discuss — may now be trying over its shoulder, with fourth-placed Arsenal 5 factors adrift however with a recreation in hand. That’s at Crystal Palace on Monday.