Spurs end Pep’s perfect EPL start
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TOTTENHAM Hotspur ended Pep Guardiola’s perfect English Premier League start with Manchester City with an impressive 2-0 victory yesterday that left the London club as the only unbeaten side.
Far from suffering a hangover after last season’s title-challenge collapse, Spurs are enjoying their best-ever start to a top-flight campaign.
City trailed for the first time in the league this season in calamitous circumstances when Aleksandar Kolarov diverted the ball into his own goal in the ninth minute.
Tottenham extended its lead as its energetic, pressing game proved too slick to handle for City. Dele Alli combined with Son Heung-min before sweeping a shot past Claudio Bravo in the 37th minute.
Bravo did save Erik Lamela’s second-half penalty but City could not avoid slumping to its first loss under Guardiola and its second setback of the week after being held by Celtic in the UEFA Champions League.
City and Tottenham complete the seventh round as they started in first and second place. Tottenham is only a point behind now, though, after Mauricio Pochettino sealed his first victory over Guardiola since the opening spell of his managerial career in 2009 when Espanyol conquered Barcelona.
A relatively kind fixture list at the start of his City career meant this was Guardiola’s first big test. He flunked it.
Although City has already won a Manchester derby against Jose Mourinho’s United, that was against a side still rebuilding from last season’s fifth-place finish. The other victories have all come against teams in the bottom half of the table.
Tottenham posed City questions that lethargic City — sorely missing the injured Kevin de Bruyne’s distribution — could not answer. The visitors were out-pressed by the hosts, whose mastery of the high-energy passing game is straight from the Guardiola playbook.
Last season, Tottenham was champion Leicester City’s closest challenger until a late implosion dropped it to third place, which was still the London club’s highest in the EPL era.
Earlier, United’s stumbles in the EPL continued with a 1-1 home draw against struggling Stoke City, which left Old Trafford without losing for the first time in 36 years.
United, which has won just one of its last four league games, took the lead in the 69th through Anthony Martial’s curler — two minutes after he came on as a substitute.
Joe Allen grabbed an 82nd-minute equalizer for Stoke following a rare mistake by David de Gea, who fumbled a long-range shot to allow Jon Walters to scoop a cross against the bar before Allen smashed home from close range.
United failed to beat an opponent that started the day in last place, still hasn’t won in seven games in the league this season, and had lost on its last 13 visits to Old Trafford dating back to 1980.
Mourinho’s team created plenty of chances but faded in the second half, less than three days after a similar lineup played in the Europa League.
“Best United performance all season,” said Mourinho, whose side beat Leicester 4-1 last weekend. “It could have been 3-0 or 4-0 at halftime and 6-0 or 7-0 at fulltime. The result is 1-1. That is football.”
Stoke was also thankful for a superb display by 33-year-old goalkeeper Lee Grant, making only his second appearance in the EPL. Among his best saves were reflex stops from Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the second minute and again in the latter stages.
In the day’s other early game, Leicester was held goalless at home by Southampton.
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