Everton 2 Man City 3

by Mike Wilton

at Goodison Park

Edin Dzeko’s brace lifted Manchester City to the top of the table to ensure the race to the title remains in their hands.

Everton’s World Cup hopeful Ross Barkley stunned the visitors with a sublime 25-yard curling effort after 10 minutes, giving England manager Roy Hodgson pause for thought but the day belonged to City who quickly recovered.

Sergio Aguero, after discussing with the bench about being substituted, found himself in plenty of space to run at the Everton defence and slot home at Tim Howard’s near post midway through the first half. This did, however, spell the last action for the Argentinian, whose groin problem forced him off.

His substitute Fernandinho helped City improve and before half-time they were ahead, Dzeko heading in from James Milner’s cross. 

Only three minutes after the break Dzeko had the simplest of tap-ins to double the advantage.

There was much talk before the game about Everton being content to lose to make it more difficult for rivals Liverpool in the title race, but when Romelu Lukaku’s bullet header reduced the deficit, City were left to cling on for 25 minutes.

City boss Manuel Pellegrini was cautious despite their return to the top of table. “It was a very big test,” said the Chilean. 

“Today was difficult because of the history in this stadium. It was a decisive moment but we haven’t finished yet. 

“We have just won one of the three games that we must win.”

Milner agreed with his manager, reminding fans that they had to win the league the hard way two seasons ago

“We won’t get carried away because we know better than anyone how close it can it be,” added Milner.

“People look at our home fixtures and say we’ll definitely win those but we have two tough fixtures and so much can happen — in our experience it went to the wire and it can do that again.”

It is not even certain that two wins will be enough as Liverpool have shown they are capable of goal fests to overturn the nine goals they trail by. 

But two home games against Aston Villa and West Ham, who are both now safe from the drop, leave City as huge favourites to claim their second title in three years.