Manchester City vs Brighton result: Gabriel Jesus delivers to squeeze into FA Cup final
Manchester City 1-0 Brighton: Pep Guardiola's quadruple dream remains alive and well after a narrow semi-final win at Wembley
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Your support makes all the difference.Manchester City are now on the brink to the most brilliant finish to a season any English side has ever seen, and one huge factor in that may be fast starts.
Yet another ludicrously early goal was the source of yet another win, to take yet another step to the quadruple, and put them within 90 minutes of another trophy. Once Gabriel Jesus had scored the only goal to make it 1-0 after a mere three minutes, Brighton and Hove Albion - no matter how creditable their display - were just never going to block Manchester City’s path to the club’s first FA Cup final in six years.
The route to the Brazilian’s strike also represented a potentially huge factor in a prospective quadruple: the return to form of Kevin De Bruyne.
For Jesus to finish, the Belgian played one of those exquisite through balls that prove so divinely elusive for defenders but so perfect for strikers. It lifted the City end, and may somehow further lift the team. It is ominous for everyone else, and an illustration of just why the quadruple might be possible, that the champions have been so good that you could have been forgiven for forgetting that De Bruyne was out for long. And yet here he was, returning with a level of play beyond any other attacker in the Premier League, to bring City to another level.
That is just another reason the previously impossible might now be possible, and why this hugely difficult April already looks more manageable.
There’s then the amount of energy they have, which is greatly aided by wins of this nature. Jesus’ goal was the third successive match where they were ahead within six minutes, never to be pegged back. It was also their sixth goal that came before the fifth-minute mark in games this season, the 12th before the 10th and 26th before the 20th.
In other words, City finish you before you even get going, their leads then generally allowing them to just control games and fully indulge in the possession that so asphyxiates them as contests. And that in turn allows them even more breathing space, with that all the more important as the April fixture list gets so psychologically and physically imposing.
The majority of those goals have come in the Premier League, helping to explain so many processions there, and a run-of-the-mill Saturday 3pm was so often what this felt like.
There were just long passages where City were comfortably passing the ball about, playing this out, saving their fire for the many more testing games to come this month.
It actually looked like their biggest trouble might be from one of their own, as Kyle Walker was fortunate not to receive a red card for a needless moment of aggression. He dropped his head as he squared up to Alireza Jahanbakhsh in the first half, and it was somewhat surprising when Anthony Taylor only gave him a booking after consulting VAR.
Walker wasn’t sent off, but he was very quickly taken off, as Guardiola removed him at half-time. A red card would have seen him miss three crucial league games - including those against Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United - at such a testing time.
If Guardiola was appealing for calm at the break, Chris Hughton was doing the opposite. Brighton did come out at half-time as if fully conscious that this was a chance at rare glory, and maybe the second FA Cup final in their history, and first ever major trophy. They went for it.
They got very close to it just after half-time, too, when a Shane Duffy header was dramatically cleared so close to the line by Aymeric Laporte. The fact he felt the need to absolutely whack it away without a thought was a sign of just how anxious City minds temporarily were.
It also a sign of something else about the team, and just another weapon.
For one of those sides often perceived as possession-based and unphysical, they give up almost nothing in the air, or at set-pieces.
So it was, for Brighton’s desperate last free-kick of the game, City headed it away with minimal fuss.
They finished strongly, in every sense.
And it means they’ve made the best possible start to this defining month of April, to go with another fine start to a game.
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