Manchester City in title driving seat after cruising to win at Leeds

The title stare-off becomes steelier with each week. Elland Road was at its raucous best and an highly-motivated Leeds played well enough to ensure Manchester City rarely neared full stride. Nevertheless the leaders mastered the situation, showing they can win via set-pieces when means of higher aesthetic merit elude them. Rodri and Nathan Aké proved the point with goals in each half, garnished later by Gabriel Jesus’ sixth in three matches and a Fernandinho daisycutter, and Pep Guardiola’s delight at the outcome was obvious. This had been a possible banana skin, with the potential leveller of such a highly-charged atmosphere; instead City cruise on and Leeds, who are in genuine danger of going down, must seek more viable routes to safety.

This encounter had an edge from the outset. It needed to, because the heat had been turned up on both teams. City would have expected Liverpool to achieve what was necessary at Newcastle; Leeds might not have banked on Burnley’s turnaround at Watford and began directly above the relegation zone. That did not appear fair reward for 11 points from their previous five games but Jesse Marsch’s players are in a dogfight; their fans knew it and, at kick-off, the noise was deafening.

It should have leapt off the scale within three minutes. City had, naturally, hogged possession but were caught after their own corner was hooked away. João Cancelo, one of five returnees as Guardiola sought a delicate balance before Wednesday’s visit to Real Madrid, slipped in the centre circle and suddenly Rodrigo had 60 yards of exposed turf to devour. Even without the pace to see the whites of Ederson’s eyes, there was an opportunity to feed the open Raphinha to his right. But he delayed and, by the time he