Manchester City beat Saints to go top of the table

Manuel Pellegrini praised Manchester City’s reaction to a testing week and insisted there is no crisis, after a 3-1 win over Southampton on Saturday put his side back on top of the English Premier League (EPL).

The result took City back to the top of the Barclays Premier League and the title favourites now want to make sure they stay there.

Early goals from Kevin de Bruyne (9) and Fabian Delph (20) seemed to have the points sewn up inside 20 minutes, but Shane Long (49) replied and Saints were close to an equaliser during a long period of dominance.

But victory came at the cost of an injury to Sergio Aguero, who hobbled off in the second half, and both Leicester City and Manchester United will have designs on supplanting City when they meet later on Saturday.

“I think the start of the game was very poor; we had a lot of mistakes in possession”, he said. “We’ve won just one point of our last six so it was important to beat a hard team who were unbeaten away”. “He’s a very technical player and I always say the way we play is good for him with his style of football”, the manager said.

“I spoke with him before the game, he was not going to play more than 65 minutes”, said the City boss.

City regained control of the match soon after – buoyed by another Caballero save to deny Tadic – and added a third goal on 70 minutes when De Bruyne found Kolarov unmarked, who fired past Stekelenburg.

Raheem Sterling dashed onto Yaya Toure’s flicked return pass in the first minute to force Maarten Stekelenburg into a save and City peppered the Southampton goal during the opening stages.

GETTY STAR MAN: De Bruyne was Man City’s talisman today “He took a kick on the heel and we’ll see tomorrow how it is”.

“We played on Wednesday a very hard game and we didn’t have 72 hours to recover from that game – Southampton had the whole week”.

“It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for me because it’s been stop-start, but training with these players can only help me”.

Aguero landed awkwardly on his ankle in the area – before limping off to be replaced by Bony in the second-half.

Newcastle has 10 points, the same as Bournemouth which staged a dramatic comeback after trailing 2-0 to Everton then 3-2 with only seconds of stoppage time left before Junior Stanislas equalised with a header to make it 3-3.

Dusan Tadic’s introduction at half-time saw the quality of Southampton’s play increase dramatically and in the 49th minute they got a goal back.