Manchester City maintain top spot after beating Burnley

Manchester City made sure they ended the day on top of the Premier League with a comfortable 2-0 win over Burnley.

Responding to Liverpool’s 2-0 lunchtime victory over Watford, first-half goals from Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan restored City’s one-point advantage ahead of a huge week, which includes the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Atletico Madrid and next week’s visit of the Reds.

City had gone 13 points clear after beating Chelsea in January – a figure inflated by the games in hand held by Liverpool – but kicked off at Turf Moor in second place after Jurgen Klopp’s side dispatched Burnley’s relegation rivals for a 10th consecutive league win.

Liverpool would have been hoping for City to feel the pressure, but they needed the fixture list to have thrown up something other than a meeting with Burnley for Pep Guardiola’s men.

The City manager may previously have described trips to Turf Moor as being like going to see the dentist but his players usually emerge with pearly white smiles, and this result means they have now won their last 10 meetings against Sean Dyche’s side by an aggregate score of 34 to one.

The first chance went to Burnley, Josh Brownhill meeting a sweeping cross from Aaron Lennon and heading narrowly wide, but it was pretty much one-way traffic after that as the hosts, having switched to a 4-5-1 formation, failed to pressure the ball.

City led with five minutes gone, with Raheem Sterling cushioning Rodri’s cross-field pass into the path of De Bruyne, who marked his 200th Premier League appearance for the club by rifling beyond Nick Pope for his eighth league goal in the last 13 games.

Rodri had tested Pope with a curling shot and sent a volley wide before City doubled