LONDON, Jan 24 : Manchester City returned to winning ways with a 2-0 defeat of bottom club Wolverhampton Wanderers moving them four points behind Premier League leaders Arsenal on Saturday, while at the other end of the table West Ham United continued their revival.
City manager Pep Guardiola left leading scorer Erling Haaland out of the starting line-up but they got their first league win in nearly a month thanks to goals by Omar Marmoush and new signing Antoine Semenyo.
Arsenal, who host fifth-placed Manchester United on Sunday, have 50 points with City on 46 having played a game more.
West Ham beat Sunderland 3-1 for a second successive league win, with captain Jarrod Bowen setting a club record with an assist and a goal in the win at the London Stadium.
They remain third from bottom but have closed the gap on 17th-placed Nottingham Forest to two points ahead of Forest’s Sunday game at Brentford.
Second-from-bottom Burnley drew a third successive Premier League game as Cristian Romero’s late equaliser for Tottenham Hotspur in a 2-2 draw denied them a precious victory.
Fulham moved up to seventh in the table as they came from a goal down to beat Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 – Harry Wilson scoring with a brilliant late free kick at Craven Cottage.
Yasin Ayari had put Brighton in front in the first half but substitute Samuel Chukwueze equalised.
City went into their clash with improving Wolves on a barren run of three draws and one defeat from their previous four league games and with this week’s 3-1 defeat at Bodo/Glimt in the Champions League still fresh in their minds.
Their slump has allowed Arsenal to forge clear at the top and has coincided with Haaland’s loss of form with the Norwegian scoring only once in his last eight games in all competitions before the game against Wolves.
Guardiola said the striker was ‘exhausted’ after an intense fixture schedule and his decision to freshen things up against Wolves paid dividends.
Starting ahead of Haaland in his first league action since the Africa Cup of Nations, Marmoush put City ahead in the sixth minute with his first league goal of the season, firing home from Matheus Nunes’s cross.
Semenyo, signed two weeks ago from Bournemouth, doubled City’s lead in first-half stoppage time with his first league goal for the club, unleashing a fierce low shot past Jose Sa.
City gave a debut to centre back Marc Guehi, signed earlier in the week from Crystal Palace, while Haaland came off the bench in the 74th minute.
BOWEN PASSES CLUB RECORD
West Ham’s 2-1 victory last week at Tottenham appears to have ignited a survival bid and they produced a strong first-half against mid-table Sunderland.
“The message before the game was just keep building on what we’ve been doing,” Bowen said.
They took the lead in the 14th minute when Bowen’s lofted cross was headed in by Crysencio Summerville.
Bowen made it 2-0 from the penalty spot following Trai Hume’s foul on Ollie Scarles, with Mateus Fernandes adding a third just before halftime with a long-range strike.
Bowen’s assist for the opener took him past Michail Antonio’s goal involvements record for West Ham and he now has 103 – 63 goals and 40 assists.
“For me the most important thing is the team and helping getting out of the situation that we’re in,” Bowen added.
Tottenham were heading for a third successive league defeat that would have put the pressure firmly back on manager Thomas Frank after Tuesday’s morale-boosting Champions League win at home to Borussia Dortmund had lifted it a notch.
Frank’s team led at halftime with a Micky van de Ven goal but Burnley turned it around and went in front after the break with goals by Axel Tuanzebe and substitute Lyle Foster.
Romero, who also scored against Dortmund, rewarded Tottenham’s intense late pressure with a thumping header levelling it up in the 89th minute.
