Michael Plant gives his verdict on Manchester City's Premier League win over Southampton.
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00:00Manchester City 1 Southampton 0 here at the Etihad Stadium. An important three
00:05points for City that does see them at least temporarily move top of the table
00:08once again but it was a bit of an underwhelming performance today from the
00:11champions. They created plenty of openings certainly in the second half
00:15when Erling Haaland had three really good chances but unlike him couldn't
00:19convert any of them. One in particular at the back post one of the probably the
00:22worst misses of his career in truth. He had previously put City 1-0 up
00:25earlier in the game courtesy of a very good goal you have to say when he held
00:29off Jan Bednarek at the back post and tapped in from a Mateus Nunes cross.
00:34He continued his impressive form, Nunes provided his third assist in a couple
00:40of days. He played a left wing again on an afternoon when once again Manchester
00:43City struggled to turn to the bench in the second half when they didn't have a
00:47huge amount of options. In fact they only named five outfield players and their
00:52subs in the latter stages were Ilkay Gundogan and John Stones. A real dearth
00:55of options for Guardiola at present but City as I say they created plenty of
01:01chances but just didn't really push on and on another day Southampton could
01:05perhaps have created a little bit more themselves. They saw a lot of the ball
01:08particularly for a visiting side to come here and particularly in the first half
01:11but from it they themselves didn't create many chances. Cameron Archer hit
01:15the crossbar at the end of the first half that was really as close as they
01:18got. I think that Southampton quitted themselves well but no Steve did you
01:23ever really think they were gonna get back into the game. City as the game
01:28grew on they had more and more control over it and but as I say just failed to
01:32take their chances. It's a you know a bit of an atypical performance I thought
01:36here today for City in that they scored first but they haven't tended to do that
01:39this season. They kept a clean sheet and they only managed to score one goal
01:42themselves so not in keeping with the performances here from City but at this
01:46stage of the campaign all that matters is picking up three points. They saw
01:49Aston Villa drop points today, Arsenal and Liverpool are of course in action
01:52tomorrow so at least one of their close rivals will drop points and at this
01:55stage although City aren't playing at their best they are still picking up
01:57points and ultimately at the moment looking good in the table.