Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini was effusive in his praise of striker Sergio Aguero as the striker once again put a spark in Manchester City in a 4-1 battering of Sunderland on Wednesday night.
Aguero scored twice, levelling Connor Wickham’s early opener and putting the finishing touches on the victory with City’s fourth goal. The victory vaulted Man City into second in the Premier League, still six points behind leaders Chelsea.
“There’s a lot of good strikers around, but Sergio is one of the finest in the world. He’s not just scoring goals, but he’s playing very well.
“We took him off near the end, but that wasn’t down to any injury or a fitness problem. He’s a very important player for our team, both with the goals he scores and in his link-up play.”
Pellegrini refuted talk of the Premier League already being down to a two-horse title race between City and Chelsea.
“I don’t think this result shows we’re in better form than Chelsea,” he said.
“You can’t be the champions in November or December – there’s still five or six months to go.
“We’re doing well and we’ll continue playing the way we are. It’s not just down to two teams – there could be three or four in with a chance. Arsenal won again, so it’s too soon to say it’s down to two.
“It’s a nice feeling to win here at the Stadium of Light. We couldn’t do it for the last four seasons, and we kept our composure well after going a goal behind.”
Goals from Stevan Jovetic and Pablo Zabaleta sandwiched in between Aguero’s double put the match away for City.
Pellegrini also raised hopes that Vincent Kompany could be fit for his side’s Champions League showdown with AS Roma after the match.
The injured City captain missed Wednesday’s comfortable win and will also sit out Saturday’s visit by Everton.
But Pellegrini revealed after the game that the 28-year-old Belgian international’s hamstring problem is not as serious as first feared.
The Chilean has refused to rule the defender out of next Wednesday’s high-profile European clash, and will give him every opportunity to feature in the final group-stage game at the Stadio Olimpico.
City are likely to need a victory over the Italians in order to progress to the knock-out stages for the second successive season, and Pellegrini said: “Vincent is improving, and maybe it’s not as serious as we thought in the beginning.
“We’ll see what happens this week to see if he’s got a chance for Roma, but at this stage, he’s got a chance.
“It’s not as serious (as first thought), because maybe it could have been one month out, but we’ll see in the next few days.”
Sunderland, meanwhile, are just two points above the relegation zone after failing to reproduce the kind of defensive display that saw them hold Chelsea 0-0 in their previous home outing.
Head coach Gus Poyet said: “We’ve had hard back-to-back games. The demands both physically and mentally on Saturday against Chelsea were a lot and we weren’t able to be at the same level against City.
“When you’re not able to do that, you pay the price against this quality of team, so we have no complaints.
“Without Aguero, they’re a different team. I was hoping he’d be given a rest tonight (Wednesday), but unfortunately, he wasn’t.”
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