Mara and Djenepo strike early to take Southampton past Manchester City

How Nathan Jones will treasure this victory. Southampton may be rock bottom of the Premier League but an inspired performance that was capped by goals from Sékou Mara and Moussa Djenepo’s spectacular chip knocked the wind out of Manchester City’s sails on a blustery night on the south coast.

For Pep Guardiola, who was aiming to become the first manager to win this competition five times and move ahead of Sir Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough, it was a night to forget as Kalvin Phillips made his first start for a City side that never really looked like finding a way back into this game after falling behind. But having now won three times in cup competitions despite having failed to pick up a single point from his four league matches, this was all about Jones.

A few weeks after criticising Phillips for being overweight when he reported back from the World Cup, Guardiola had praised the England midfielder’s “incredible work ethic” in training. So it wasn’t that much of a surprise to see the 27-year-old finally included in the starting lineup 191 days after his £42m move from Leeds, unlike the exclusion of Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland for the second successive match.

In Guardiola’s other changes from the FA Cup victory over Chelsea João Cancelo, Ilkay Gündogan and Jack Grealish returned, while Jones also decided to mix things up after Southampton’s comeback win at Crystal Palace by making five changes and including the new signing Mislav Orsic on the bench.

Jones admitted this week that he is still struggling to win over the Southampton supporters after replacing Ralph Hasenhüttl in November but promised that his players would be aggressive from the start against their intimidating opponents. Having survived an early