Manchester City moved up to third in the Premier League with a routine win over Stoke ahead of Tuesday’s Champions League semi-final with Real Madrid.<\/p>\n
Fernando headed the hosts in front from a corner before a Sergio Aguero penalty – awarded for Ryan Shawcross’s foul on Kelechi Iheanacho – doubled the lead.<\/p>\n
Iheanacho, 19, added the third from close range, then the teenager rounded the keeper to seal an emphatic win.<\/p>\n
Stoke conceded four goals for the third straight Premier League game.<\/p>\n
Relive the action from the Etihad Stadium<\/p>\n
Reaction from the Etihad and from Saturday’s Premier League and FA Cup games<\/p>\n
City ready to face Real<\/strong><\/p>\n Manuel Pellegrini rested a number of players, including captain Vincent Kompany and midfielder Kevin de Bruyne, with the first-leg visit of 10-time champions of Europe Real Madrid in mind.<\/p>\n Yet his side go into one of the biggest games in the club’s history with confidence high after moving above Arsenal, who play at Sunderland on Sunday, in the table.<\/p>\n City’s place at the top of table of European football next season is by no means certain but, a slow start notwithstanding, they showed their ruthless side to dispose of a Stoke team that missed several good chances.<\/p>\n Such was City’s dominance, Pellegrini could afford the luxury of bringing off influential players David Silva and Sergio Aguero to rest legs for the heavyweight meeting with Real.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Manchester City moved up to third in the Premier League with a routine win over Stoke ahead of Tuesday’s Champions League semi-final with Real Madrid. Fernando headed the hosts in front from a corner before a Sergio Aguero penalty – awarded for Ryan Shawcross’s foul on Kelechi Iheanacho – doubled the lead. Iheanacho, 19, added […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":208957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/208957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}