Manchester City finish the season on record-breaking 100 points as Gabriel Jesus' late show sinks Southampton
Southampton 0-1 Manchester City: The Brazilian striker scored with practically the final touch of the game to fire City to a record-breaking 100 point finish
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Your support makes all the difference.The Manchester City bench exploded onto the pitch in a blur of purple tracksuits. Vincent Kompany and Ederson sprinted right, towards their team-mates, who were jumping into the away end. Pep Guardiola skipped, clenched his fists and looked up into the sky. It was a celebration that made you forget City had won the title almost one whole month ago.
But with the last kick of City’s season they had finally completed an achievement that will stand firmer in history than even the title itself. Gabriel Jesus’ winner – a brilliant goal in any context – was City’s 106th of the season, a record. It delivered their 32nd win, another record. And it took them up to 100 points, the most important record of all.
It is an achievement that deserves to be remembered alongside Manchester United’s treble and Arsenal’s Invincibles season, setting a standard for consistent excellence that will be very difficult for anyone else to match. Chelsea’s old record of 95 points, from 13 years ago, has had another 5% added on top of it.
What made City’s celebrations even more intense was that for the first 93 minutes of this insipid match, they never looked especially fussed about reaching their century. Pep Guardiola had rested some big names, the rest of their team took their cue from that. City had played the entire first half at walking pace, and Southampton, who did not need a result in the end to stay up, looked more dangerous.
City did pick up in the second half but even then it was a moment that arrived out of nowhere that took them to this historic landmark. Kevin De Bruyne, their best and most important player, picked up the ball deep inside City’s half. Looking up, he lifted one of those perfect searching passes over the head of the Southampton defence. Gabriel Jesus ran onto it, trapped the ball perfectly on his left boot then with his right lifted it over Alex McCarthy and into the net.
There was barely time for Southampton to re-start but with Swansea City losing at home, it did not matter. Saints’ hard work to stay up was already done and this was ultimately a free hit. Although Mark Hughes’ side did in fact start the game stronger than City. While the champions were happy to slowly pass their way into a rhythm, Southampton were more forceful and more direct. Their players looked hungrier and stronger than City, even though they could never quite find the precision to score. Wesley Hoedt got up at a corner but headed against the bar. Pierre Emile Hojbjerg scuffed a shot wide. Hoedt again up from the back drove one into the side netting.
City ambled through the first half with such a casual summer holiday feel that they barely even looked like a Pep Guardiola side. There was intensity, no force, with or without the ball. Too many City players looked like they had an eye on next month’s World Cup, and avoiding an injury in a game that counted for nothing. The only player who liked like making anything happen was Raheem Sterling, playing as a centre forward, making runs in behind that his team-mates were never sharp enough to meet.
City’s only real first half effort came when Sterling picked up the ball miles from goal, span Maya Yoshida and hit a 25-yarder over the bar.
It was only in the second half that City began to play anything like the team with 97 points from 37 games. Everything they did was quicker and sharper and all of a sudden Alex McCarthy was under pressure. Kevin de Bruyne flashed a free-kick wide, Bernardo Silva failed to get on the end of a Leroy Sane cross and Sterling had a shot deflected onto the post. When John Stones’ header was tipped over it felt, for the first time in the game, as if City might win this.
But then City took their foot off the gas, Fernandinho had to clear off the line from Dusan Tadic and it looked as if any winner would come from Southampton, after all. Until De Bruyne and Jesus combined in the game’s final moment, to sign off this historic season in the most perfect possible way.
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