Antoine Semenyo’s first-half goal sealed Manchester City a hard-fought 1-0 win at Leeds and lifted his side to within two points of Premier League leaders Arsenal.<\/p>\n
Semenyo maintained his impressive goalscoring form since joining City from Bournemouth in January, clinically converting a rare chance for the visitors in stoppage time before the interval.<\/p>\n
City\u2019s fourth straight league win kept the pressure on Arsenal before their home game against derby rivals Chelsea on Sunday, while Leeds were left to rue a string of missed first-half chances.<\/p>\n
Daniel Farke\u2019s relegation battlers lost for just the third time in 15 league matches, suffering a rare defeat under the Elland Road floodlights, to stay six points above the bottom three.<\/p>\n
Leading Premier League goalscorer Erling Haaland was not included in City\u2019s squad after sustaining a minor injury in training, missing out against his boyhood club.<\/p>\n
Haaland\u2019s replacement Rayan Cherki was City\u2019s only change following last week\u2019s home win against Newcastle, while Leeds were unchanged after their 1-1 draw at Aston Villa.<\/p>\n
Leeds\u2019 survival fight has gained momentum since Phil Foden\u2019s stoppage-time winner in the reverse fixture at the Etihad Stadium in November, with only two defeats in their following 14 league matches.<\/p>\n
And they should have taken an early lead when Dominic Calvert-Lewin steered Brenden Aaronson\u2019s excellent cross wide from in front of goal in the third minute.<\/p>\n
Play was temporarily halted by referee Peter Bankes in the 11th minute to allow City\u2019s Muslim players to break their Ramadan fast before Calvert-Lewin prodded narrowly off-target again, this time from a tight angle.<\/p>\n
City goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma held James Justin\u2019s shot and Aaronson was next to fire just wide, from Jayden Bogle\u2019s cross, as Leeds\u2019 intense press won them plenty of possession high up the field.<\/p>\n
The visitors began to hold onto possession and mount pressure of their own 15 minutes before half-time.<\/p>\n
But only after Aaronson had been denied by Donnarumma in a one-on-one following a swift Leeds counter-attack did City create their first noteworthy chance, with Nico O\u2019Reilly\u2019s header well saved by Karl Darlow.<\/p>\n
City took the lead in first-half stoppage time. Rayan Ait-Nouri raced clear down the left on to Cherki\u2019s superb through-ball and crossed for Semenyo to convert his sixth City goal in 11 appearances in all competitions from four yards.<\/p>\n
Leeds made another fast start to the second period as Matheus Nunes\u2019 last-ditch block thwarted Calvert-Lewin in the box, but City maintained their composure and were soon back in their rhythm.<\/p>\n
Darlow\u2019s flying save kept out Marc Guehi\u2019s header and it was mainly one-way traffic, with Leeds working tirelessly to prevent City carving out clear chances.<\/p>\n
Leeds lifted the home fans with a late flurry and substitute Jaka Bijol headed inches wide, but City held on to notch their 18th league win of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Antoine Semenyo’s first-half goal sealed Manchester City a hard-fought 1-0 win at Leeds and lifted his side to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-322899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}