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| Photo from The Telegraph |
Manchester City's clean sweep of four titles is still on after narrowly beating Brighton.
Pep Guardiola's side were far from their dazzling best, but Brighton weren't able to capitalise on a rare lapse from the Citizens.
The only goal came in the fourth minute as Gabriel Jesus dived to head in Kevin de Bruyne's perfectly flighted cross.
Brighton managed to keep the score at only 1-0, and looked like scoring themselves with Glenn Murray poised in the six-yard box before Aymeric Laporte managed to clear over the crossbar.
That was as good as it got for Brighton, and they may come away feeling disappointed that they didn't go at City more.
They were obviously set up to defend, but the fatigue in the City players was apparent and Chris Hughton should have encouraged his team to be a bit more adventurous.
While City's quadruple is still on, they won't get anywhere near the remaining three titles playing the way they did against the seagulls.
You can't compete on four fronts and then only put one goal past Brighton.
I mean no disrespect to Brighton, who defended as well as I've seen from them this season, it was just one of those games that was killed off early on by a piece of individual brilliance.
Not much is being made of what I saw as a huge tuning point in the match - Kyle Walker escaping a red card after forcefully thrusting his head into the face of Alireza Jahanbakhsh after the pair clashed.
After a red card had not originally been given, VAR was used and the decision remained the same.
If anyone has any idea why Walker wasn't sent off, please let me know in the comments below, I'm absolutely baffled by it.
As an aside, I often criticise the kit choices and combinations due to my colour-blindness, I find it difficult to distinguish between them sometimes.
But another issue is that Manchester City were shown as the 'home team' by the broadcasters, and yet they were the ones in a changed kit.
I simply don't understand that, would it be that difficult to have just a shred of continuity?
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| Photo from Evening Standard |
Watford mounted an incredible comeback from 2-0 down against Wolves, inspired by the introduction of Gerard Deulofeu, who got a brace from off the bench.
Wolves were two goals up with 11 minutes left to play, after Matt Doherty's first half header and Raul Jimenez's chest and volley goal - the latter looked to me like something out of beach football, definitely worth a look if you haven't seen it already.
Javi Gracia then introduced the diminutive Spaniard to rescue the hornets, and he obliged in spectacular fashion.
He chipped a beauty from the left-side over John Ruddy, you couldn't do much better than that even with a pitching wedge at your disposal.
Troy Deeney was then fouled by Leander Dendoncker in injury time for a certain penalty, the captain drilled home the spot-kick to send the match to extra time.
The wind was in Watford's sails, while Wolves could not maintain the brilliant team performance they had shown for 80 minutes.
Deulofeu then scored the winner in the 104th minute, set up by Deeney, he calmly finished past Ruddy to end a sublime counter attack and a brilliant match - as I predicted it would be.
Final
Saturday 18 May
Manchester City v Watford
You have to put City as favourites of course, but even if they go a few goals ahead, Watford will fight until the very end as we've seen here, so I think we're in for a cracking final.
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