Manchester City punish Arsenal, Cherki < Wirtz and Everton eye the Champions League - 3pm Blackout | OneFootball

Manchester City applied the pressure on Arsenal in a reinvigorated title race, while Everton are making a quiet push for the Champions League.

A solid afternoon of Premier League action, with Arsenal’s lunchtime defeat having ramifications on the later games. Everton are coming for that crown.

Newcastle 2-1 Burnley: Howe the Magpies needed that

Newcastle United were in dire need of a comfortable, run-of-the-mill home victory this weekend. Burnley handed it to them on a silver platter.

Tuesday’s 2-2 home draw with Tottenham Hotspur was a very strange game, but the bottom line was that Newcastle dropped more points via an injury-time goal, which has already happened too many times this season.

The lines are so fine that Newcastle would be fifth going into matchday 15 had they not squandered points in added time at home to Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs.

Pressure being on Eddie Howe might be a blasphemous concept in the eyes of many, but Saturday’s home game against his former club held much more significance than you might expect.

His side did not start very well. For the first 30 minutes, Burnley looked the most likely to open the scoring. Aaron Ramsdale flapped at a corner and watched the ball hit the bar at 0-0, but an Anthony Gordon effort that struck the post seemed to be the shot in the arm Newcastle needed.

They were desperate for a comfortable win, and it turns out Newcastle needed a little bit of luck to get their wish. Bruno Guimaraes’ opening goal direct from a corner was exactly that. Gordon was also probably a bit lucky not to concede a foul for impeding former Magpies goalkeeper Martin Dubravka.

There was soon another battle between Dubravka and Gordon when the latter stepped up to score a penalty that came via one of the most mindless handballs you will ever see from Lesley Ugochukwu, who gave Virgil van Dijk a run for his money by seemingly trying to catch the ball.

That was not the first example of Burnley doing Newcastle a favour, because at the time of Gordon’s penalty they were already a man down. Lucas Pires had taken down Anthony Elanga as the last man.

Despite his side having a clear advantage as a result of the red card, Elanga looked genuinely gutted to be fouled on the edge of the box when he desperately needed to score his first goal for the club after costing 45 million big ones.

Down to ten men and two goals behind, there was no chance Burnley would get anything at St James’ Park, and that is exactly how it turned out.

Three points for Newcastle were just what the doctor ordered. And Howe was even able to give Yoane Wissa his first minutes in a Newcastle shirt. It’s just a shame that Jacob Ramsey gave away a silly penalty in stoppage time.

The Magpies are up to tenth in the Premier League table, only one point behind Sunderland after their defeat to Manchester City. Next week’s Wear-Tyne derby is going to be bloody brilliant.

Manchester City 3-0 Sunderland: The title race is back on

After Aston Villa beat Arsenal, the pressure was on Manchester City to close the gap at the top of the Premier League to two points. They were never going to let that get to them, were they?

This is a different team from the one capable of those frightening runs to steamroll their way to the title, but they are still mentality monsters in the sense that opportunities to capitalise on rivals dropping points will not be wasted. Those are the moments when titles are won and lost, and in the blink of an eye, Arsenal have gone from being shoo-ins for the title to crumbling under the pressure.

It’s only two points between City and Arsenal after 15 games, while Aston Villa’s win over Mikel Arteta’s side leaves them three off the top. Chelsea, meanwhile, have gone from Arsenal’s biggest competition to eight points behind in the space of seven days.

Against a very good Sunderland team, City took the lead through a Ruben Dias belter that looked reminiscent of Vincent Kompany’s ‘Where do you want your statue?’ strike against Leicester City – only for the replay to show there was a significant deflection. What a shame.

Josko Gvardiol scored a goal more reflective of a defender with a header from a corner shortly after, and for the second week running Pep Guardiola’s men were 2-0 up at half-time against a newly-promoted team.

Sunderland couldn’t repeat Leeds United’s heroics in a very open second half. Wilson Isidor wasted a huge chance after catching Dias out on the edge of his own box, with Gianluigi Donnarumma alert to thwart him. Granit Xhaka also rattled the post. Lutsharel Geertruida then had to clear a shot off the line as City continued to look a good bet for the third goal of the game.

The game-killing third came in the 65th minute when Phil Foden backed up his corner assist with a header from close range. It’s great to see Foden back at the top of his game, but his goal was all about Rayan Cherki’s rabona-cross assist. What a terrific player he is. Florian Wirtz could never.

At 3-0, City looked like getting a fourth and fifth, while Regis Le Bris opted for damage limitation. He brought off Xhaka and Noah Sadiki with 20 minutes remaining, with next week’s derby against Newcastle in mind. Luke O’Nien clearly wasn’t thinking about that when he got a straight red card for an awful challenge on Matheus Nunes.

There are expectations for Sunderland to do a number on their north-east rivals, while City could be five points behind Arsenal when they kick off against Crystal Palace next week, as the Gunners host Wolves earlier in the day. The kick-off gods are not in their favour, but this showed they can capitalise on a slip.

Everton 3-0 Nottingham Forest: Another Champions League push for Moyes

Sean Dyche once said he had learned “from seven different managers in seven different years and who have all been looking for the magic key to unlock Everton Football Club”.

Coming as he did at the end of a succession line which read Martinez, Koeman, Allardyce, Silva, Ancelotti, Benitez and Lampard, that was Dyche massaging the passage of time a little – it was over a decade since the exit of David Moyes by then – but summing up the problem of those who came before him.

There have been moments of prosperity on this half of Merseyside since. It was not until the last few years when relegation battles and revolving coaching doors became a regularity.

But it turns out the magic key has been in the back pocket of Moyes all this time.

He has Everton, quite unthinkably, fifth with precisely no-one noticing. Their inability to string more than a couple of consecutive Premier League wins together has allowed the Toffees to fly under the radar and into the Champions League places.

It evokes inevitable thoughts of the 2004/05 season, when Moyes guided Everton to fourth and Europe’s top table despite never winning more than three games in a row and ending with a negative goal difference.

They are sat on +1 after 15 games after a routine dismantling of Nottingham Forest and Dyche, without whom this exciting chapter in a brand new stadium would not have been possible.

His role in keeping Everton up through points deductions and off-field upheaval should not be overlooked. But Dyche and Everton could never hope to work as a union in the same way Moyes does here.

Forest, who had won 3-0 at Liverpool only a fortnight prior, were summarily and deservedly beaten by the same scoreline on their return.

After taking the lead within two minutes from a Nikola Milenkovic own goal, Everton asserted their dominance. Thierno Barry finally broke his duck and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall crowned another excellent performance with a strike of his own.

It was a painful afternoon which drove home what Dyche could have won, but what Moyes will forever feel like the only person who can understand. Everton is his club and they are flying.