Manchester City’s Erling Haaland extended his remarkable scoring streak to 12 straight matches as his side recorded a comfortable 2-0 victory at Villarreal.<\/p>\n
Captain Bernardo Silva was also on target at the Estadio De La Ceramica as he followed up the Norwegian’s early effort with a powerful header before half-time.<\/p>\n
City were not at their fluent best and their Spanish hosts gave them some uncomfortable moments, particularly in the second half, but a second victory in the league phase did not seem in doubt.<\/p>\n
Haaland’s 16th-minute goal was his 24th in 14 outings for club and country this season and extended his goalscoring streak to 12 matches.<\/p>\n
It was also his 53rd in the Champions League, lifting him to 10th on the all-time list at the age of just 25.<\/p>\n
His prolific form is certainly masking the absence of injured midfield linchpin Rodri, although the Spain international was still centre of attention as City visited his first professional club.<\/p>\n
The match was preceded by a presentation to the 29-year-old, who was making his first return to his old stomping ground since winning the Ballon d’Or last year.<\/p>\n
The home supporters may have been denied the sight of seeing him play but he was given a generous reception as he recovers from his latest setback.<\/p>\n
On this occasion he was not missed by City, who had not won any of their previous five away games in the competition.<\/p>\n
That sequence seemed likely to end as they made a strong start.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Doku could have opened the scoring inside the first minute but shot tamely at goalkeeper Luiz Junior and Haaland headed wide.<\/p>\n
Villarreal wanted a penalty after Georges Mikautadze went down following a challenge from Matheus Nunes but nothing was given and City grabbed a deserved lead after 16 minutes.<\/p>\n
Savinho played a nice ball to Rico Lewis and he swivelled sharply in the area to tee up Haaland for a simple tap-in.<\/p>\n
Villarreal had a good spell in response and Pape Gueye flashed a powerful left-foot shot just wide from distance.<\/p>\n
City doubled their lead five minutes before the interval as Savinho whipped in a cross and Silva headed in powerfully at the near post.<\/p>\n
Savinho created a chance for himself after the break with a good run into the box but his shot was blocked by Luiz.<\/p>\n
Villarreal had another promising period but Gianluigi Donnarumma was not tested until Gueye called him into action with a thunderous drive from just inside the area in the 70th minute. The Senegalese headed wide soon after.<\/p>\n
Haaland twice went close to doubling his tally for the night as he forced two saves from Luiz in quick succession.<\/p>\n
Nicolas Pepe almost set up a nervy finish when he headed against the post in the last minute but City saw out the game.<\/p>\n
Watch Eintracht Frankfurt vs Liverpool in the Champions League on Wednesday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and the RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester City’s Erling Haaland extended his remarkable scoring streak to 12 straight matches as his side recorded a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-137314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}