SWANSEA CITY 2 MANCHESTER CITY 3: The Manchester City juggernaut rolls on. Another three goals and another three points for Manuel Pellegrini's team, who survived a late scare to rack up a fifth straight Premier League win to strengthen their title challenge on a wet and blustery afternoon in South Wales.
It was the first time City won back-to-back away games in the league under Pellegrini and, although the excellent Wilfried Bony’s second goal of the afternoon, in the 91st minute, led to an anxious final few moments for the visitors, the result was never really in doubt.
City, who have now scored a remarkable 57 goals in 20 Premier League matches this season, are playing with the confidence of a team who believe they will score whenever they set foot on the pitch.
On a day when Sergio Aguero, their prolific striker, was again absent through injury, Alvaro Negredo was substituted and Edin Dzeko frustrated in his attempts to add to his record, City still scored three times away from home.
Double figures
Fernandinho, who waited until the middle of December to register his first for City, has now scored three in his last five matches; Yaya Toure took his Premier League tally for the season into double figures to restore the visitors' lead, after Bony had equalised for Swansea on the stroke of half-time; and Aleksandar Kolarov provided the gloss with a superb individual effort.
It was the sort of game that Manchester City might have lost away from home earlier in the season, when they were defeated 3-2 by Cardiff City and Aston Villa in August and September. But there is more resilience about Pellegrini’s team now.
The manager suggested that his team are benefiting from no longer committing the sort of defensive errors that Cardiff and Villa took great pleasure in punishing.
“It’s very important, that character we showed today, because at the beginning of the season we dropped too many points away,” Pellegrini said.
“It’s not good for this team to win just 11 points out of 27 [from the away games] we played in the first half of the season. Winning here, the first game away of the year, is very important for us.
"We didn't lose the games against Cardiff and Aston Villa because we didn't play well; we made a lot of mistakes and conceded easy goals."
No complaints
Swansea boss Michael Laudrup had no complaints about the result but was understandably disappointed with the first and third goals his team conceded.
The opener came about after Samir Nasri’s corner bounced off Jonathan de Guzman and ran through to the edge of the penalty area, from where Fernandinho, completely unmarked, lashed a low shot into the net.
Swansea, to their credit, never allowed the visitors to take a stranglehold on the match and equalised through Bony in first-half injury-time. Having twice drilled narrowly wide of Joe Hart’s far post, Bony found his range with a well directed – albeit marginally offside – header from De Guzman’s cross.
Buoyed by that goal, Swansea started the second half with renewed belief but were behind again when Toure thrashed an angled drive beyond Gerhard Tremmel via a deflection off the sole of Ashley Williams’s right boot.
Within eight minutes City had a third. Kolarov dispossessed Wayne Routledge close to the touchline and ran from inside his own half to the edge of the Swansea penalty area unchallenged. After stepping inside Chico Flores’s half-hearted attempt to stop him, the left-back hit a right-footed shot that brushed off Jose Canas en route to the back of the net.
Hart, coming off his line for a corner he had no chance of getting, almost handed Williams a goal in the 73rd minute before Bony got his and Swansea’s second with a 30-yard raking drive in injury-time.
The two goals were no more than he deserved. "It was by far the best performance from Bony while he was a Swansea player," Laudrup said. "That's the way we want to see him."
Guardian Service
