Haaland punishes Southampton to keep Manchester City on Arsenal’s trail

There is little chance of Manchester City going away. This was a second successive 4-1 win owed to clinical finishing and impeccable timing, the returning Erling Haaland breaching a spirited Southampton at the end of a relatively flat first half. Haaland would score again, brilliantly, after Jack Grealish doubled the lead; Sékou Mara offered brief hope of a Saints revival but Julián Álvarez quickly converted a penalty and sent all eyes towards Arsenal’s Easter Sunday visit to Liverpool. Should the league leaders fail to win, City’s destiny will be in their own hands.

Outwardly, one of the biggest among Southampton’s many difficulties was that this could not be written off as a free hit. Those do not exist over Easter, and certainly not when you start the evening four points shy of safety. Rubén Sellés had expressed confidence in his players’ capacity to overhaul that deficit and could perhaps reflect St Mary’s had not been a happy hunting ground for City over the past year. Saints merited a 1-1 draw in January 2022 and prevailed, albeit against a heavily rotated opponent, in the fifth round of the Carabao Cup three months ago.

They began as if channelling that spirit, a flurry of pressure culminating in a delivery from Carlos Alcaraz that none of his teammates had the wherewithal to attack. Ederson then evinced some discomfort in possession and there was enough for a subdued home support to cling on to.

Nonetheless, City soon went to work. Their first attack was a sweeping one and resulted in Ilkay Gündogan finding Grealish free on the left of the box. Gavin Bazunu, signed from City last summer, parried Grealish’s first-time curler and the ricochet bounced too high for an onrushing Kevin De Bruyne.

The pattern of City