Newcastle United's unbeaten record has fallen - not entirely surprisingly - at the hands of Manchester City at the Eithad Stadium. Although the visitors started the game reasonably brightly, defending very well, they never looked likely to trouble Joe Hart and City were able to maintain possession and keep pushing forward, and eventually they got their breakthrough 41 minutes into the match, when Ryan Taylor blocked a Tim-Krul-bound shot with a raised right arm and Mario Balotelli nonchalantly rolled the ball into the back of the net. The Italy striker celebrated by being very angry.
The Ryan Taylor-shaped floodgates were open, and Newcastle couldn't close them again. Minutes later, the left back made an awful mistake in his own penalty area, allowing Micah Richards to steal in and poke the ball past Krul to give the hosts a 2-0 halftime lead. Things didn't get very much better in the second half, and it was Richards who once again terrorised Newcastle, earning a penalty when the rampaging right back was hauled down by Hatem Ben Arfa. With Balotelli off for David Silva, Sergio Aguero stepped up to take the spot kick, and the result was very similar apart from there being smiles involved.
City probably could have scored more goals, but three was enough and they backed off a little bit, even allowing Newcastle a late consolation goal when Joleon Lescott opted not to bother doing any defending and leaving Joe Hart alone againts Demba Ba and Ryan Gosling. The England goalkeeper did well to save Ba's initial effort, diving at the big striker's feet, but Gosling's subsequent tap in from two yards made the whole painful effort rather pointless.
Anyway, that late goal didn't matter, and City would see the game out pretty comfortably to win 3-1. City have now scored two or more goals in 14 straight league games, are in a commanding position atop the table, and no team has had a better start since the Premier League's inception. They look like they could win this thing.
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