Toney brace hands Manchester City shock home defeat to Brentford

Toney brace hands Manchester City shock home defeat to Brentford

Manchester City hit a stumbling block in their final league fixture before the World Cup break as Pep Guardiola’s side suffered a surprise 2-1 defeat against Brentford at home. Phil Foden cancelled out Ivan Toney’s opener in the closing stages of the first half, but the Brentford striker had the last laugh, netting in the 8th minute of second-half stoppage time to snap Manchester City’s 17-game unbeaten run at home in the Premier League.

Manchester City entered this fixture on the back of two unconvincing wins in the Premier League against Leicester City and Fulham, the latter requiring a 95th-minute Erling Haaland penalty winner, and the defending champions were comfortably second best against Brentford at home on Saturday.

The Bees began the game on the front foot and had two glorious chances to open the scoring, with Frank Onyeka and Ivan Toney testing Ederson inside the first six minutes. Thomas Frank’s side eventually took the lead in the 16th minute via the head of Ivan Toney. The Englishman shrugged off the disappointment of not being included in Gareth Southgate’s World Cup squad by netting his ninth league goal of the season. Toney got on the end of Ben Mee’s flick-on and directed his header over Ederson to put Brentford 1-0 in front.

Manchester City weren’t at their fluent best in the first period but still managed to find the equaliser in injury time, with Phil Foden rifling home through a sea of bodies into the top corner to level the scores.

The home side began to move through the gears in the second half as Ilkay Gundogan fluffed a glorious chance to put his team in front, but Brentford retained their threat on the counter-attack. Aymeric Laporte was forced to make a superb last-ditch tackle to deny Toney a tap-in at the far post. Pep Guardiola brought on striker Julian Alvarez for left-back Joao Cancelo as City pushed for a winner, but the spaces they left open in defence proved to be costly as the Bees stung the home team on the counter to give Brentford a famous win.

Josh DaSilva burst past Manuel Akanji on the right wing before setting up Ivan Toney, who passed the ball into an open net to kill the game in the 98th minute. Toney even had the time to complete a hat-trick moments later, only for Kevin de Bruyne to make a last-ditch goal-line block to keep the score at 2-1.

Having suffered their second league defeat of the season, Manchester City slipped further behind league-leaders Arsenal before the World Cup break, with Mikel Arteta’s side taking a five-point advantage into the second half of the campaign following their win over Wolves.