Manchester City on Saturday issued the perfect response to their first domestic loss since January by posting their biggest-ever Premier League win, 8-0, as a bewildered Watford could not cope with the relentless champions.
Defensive mistakes cost City dearly last weekend as newly promoted Norwich City subjected Pep Guardiola’s side to their first league defeat since they were beaten 2-1 by Newcastle United almost eight months ago.
That result got City’s competitive fires burning as they won their final 14 league games to clinch a second successive Premier League title.
Photo: AFP
The champions were expected to fight back following last week’s defeat and Watford were powerless to stop a rampaging City.
City took just 52 seconds to get off the mark, with the superb Kevin De Bruyne unlocking Watford with a sublime pass for David Silva to break the deadlock.
Additional goals from Sergio Aguero, Riyad Mahrez, Bernardo Silva and Nicolas Otamendi gave City a 5-0 lead in less than 18 minutes — the fastest a team has scored five times in Premier League history.
Watford were forced to bring on an extra defender just after the half hour mark. They got a brief reprieve until the 48th minute, but even after that sixth goal from Bernardo Silva, City kept on punishing helpless Watford goalkeeper Ben Foster.
City had 28 shots at goal, 14 in each half.
After Bernardo Silva had completed his hat-trick and De Bruyne had added an eighth point, City kept up the pressure as they chased Manchester United’s record victory margin in the Premier League — a 9-0 win over Ipswich Town in 1995.
Riyad Mahrez and De Bruyne both had good chances to score City’s ninth point, but in the end, they fell one short.
“What I like the most is normally when it’s 5-0 at halftime the second half is not serious,” Guardiola said. “It’s boring — but we did the opposite, and we were more aggressive and made a very good second half.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier