City Watch: Stones wins it at the death

John Stones’ latest clutch goal gave Manchester City an important 2-1 win against Wolves in the Premier League.

The England international has regularly exhibited his late goal scoring ability since he joined the side in 2016.

However, his winner led to a lot of chatter among fans of the Premier League as Bernardo Silva seemed to interrupt the action of play that led to the goal.

According to rules, if a player disrupts a goalkeeper's vision or does anything to prevent him from making a save, the goal could be deemed illegal.

A check from the VAR seemed likely, but Pep Guardiola’s side got on the right end of the check this time and walked out of Molineux with three points.

Jorgen Strand Larsen opened the scoring early for Wolves with a brilliant finish off a Nelson Semedo cross.

Despite their league position, Wolves did not deter to the challenge of the champions and kept forcing attacks.

Semedo had an easy shot at goal where he only had to beat Ederson, but the Brazilian managed to do a great job to save a poor shot from the Portuguese player.

Just over ten minutes after later, Josko Gvardiol scored a stunner where he curled the ball from outside the box in the top corner to take some pressure off City.

From thereon, it looked like a regular second-half dominance was on the cards with Erling Haaland waiting to get on the scoresheet to end his long two game goal-drought in the league.

However, none of that was to happen and credit goes to Gary O’Neil who inspired his team to play quality football despite their  poor start to the 2024-25 season.

Going 1-1 into added time, Wolves certainly should have been confident of grabbing a point if it was any other team, considering the performance they had put on.

But given the Blues’ resilience that has been on display several times in their run to winning four consecutive titles, what happened seemed completely understandable.

Stones’ 95th minute winner not only helped City grab three points, it gives them a chance to go top of the table next week as Liverpool head to London for a game against Arsenal.

A positive result for City and a draw in the fixture at Emirates, would mean Pep’s men take charge of the top spot, a position they have gotten used to taking on a regular basis.

While the controversies on the outside continue to rumble, it is clear this side has the will of a champion.

Whether these results help them get to their fifth consecutive league title or not is a question that only time will tell, but it clear that other sides will have to do something outrageous to get their hands on the trophy that has been in the blue side of Manchester for four years now.