The road to the championship remains clear for Manchester City, beating Hull City 2-0 in a tough away match after losing Vincent Kompany to a red card but getting the win after a brilliant goal from David Silva and another genius touch from the Spaniard, setting up Edin Dzeko with the finishing goal.
After the two losses to Barcelona and the frustration of being outplayed by a better team, not to mention getting knocked out of the FA Cup by Wigan of all teams, Manchester City are left with only one title to chase, the most important one. Three games in hand, nine points behind, the way to chase down Chelsea began against Hull, a rough team at their home ground but obviously part of the relegation battle, especially after this loss.
Things went quite well for Hull early on. Their aggressive start brought out the worst in City, and also a red card after only 10 minutes. Nikica Jelavic fouled Vincent Kompany to win the ball off of him but Lee Mason ignored that. So Kompany decided to stop Jelavic by pulling him down on his way to goal. A justified red card for Kompany, but that wouldn’t have been necessary if the original call was the right one.
However, this Manchester City team is made of sterner stuff than the one we saw last season or from earlier in this one, when every away match seemed too high of a hurdle. David Silva scored a stunning curler from outside the box, and for the rest of the match did an excellent job in helping the defense. Hull got chances through crosses, but no creativity or any kind of sohpistication meant Manchester City were able to handle those minor dangers quite well for the most part. Joe Hart was alert enough the rest of the time.
Silva getting a great through ball from Yaya Toure resulted in City’s second goal, just before the final whistle. Silva got by a defender, noticed the movement from Edin Dzeko and used the outside of his foot to set up the Bosnian for a clinching second goal, putting City six points behind Chelsea with two matches left to complete, while the pressure moves to the league leaders, who play against Aston Villa in Birmingham next.