Carlos Tevez got back into the swing of things as Man City hit six, but Man Utd remain out in front.
Man City hit six on the road, but Man Utd respond to maintain lead
Carlos Tevez got back into the swing of things, quite literally, as Manchester City hit six on the road at Norwich, but Manchester United remain out in front after offering the perfect response in a home date with Aston Villa.
Swansea made a welcome return to winning ways against relegation-haunted Blackburn and West Brom broke through the 40-point barrier with a narrow victory over struggling Queens Park Rangers.
Elsewhere, on a weekend which saw the Premier League schedule disrupted by the FA Cup semi-finals, Wolves slipped ever closer to the top-flight trapdoor after playing out a stalemate at Sunderland.
Manchester City got the weekend up and running, and
did so in some style as they left Carrow Road with three points and six goals safely tucked away. A 6-1 victory suggests the Blues are far from out of the title picture this season, despite repeated claims from Roberto Mancini that his side are facing mission impossible. The Blues survived a couple of early scares against
Norwich before opening the floodgates on 18 minutes. Carlos Tevez, back from a self-imposed exile and back in the starting line-up, broke the deadlock with a rasping effort from the edge of the box that dipped and swerved its way past John Ruddy. Tevez then combined with his fellow Argentine frontman Sergio Aguero for City's second, with the latter crashing the ball into the top corner after being teed up by a delicate back-heel. Andrew Surman pulled one back for the Canaries inside six minutes of the re-start, but City's South American strike force continued to share the away goals between them, with two efforts in the space of two minutes seeing Tevez nod home number three and Aguero bend number four spectacularly into the bottom corner. Tevez wrapped up his hat-trick after latching onto a poor back-pass - leading to a tongue-in-cheek golf swing celebration - and Adam Johnson rounded off the scoring in stoppage-time.
A marker had been put down to
Manchester United ahead of their home date with
Aston Villa on Sunday, with City having closed to within two points of the table-topping Red Devils by the time they took the field. Any suggestion that Sir Alex Ferguson's side may be feeling the heat following a shock midweek reversal at lowly Wigan was
blown out of the water inside seven minutes at Old Trafford. Ashley Young went to a ground a little too easily as he brushed past Ciaran Clark inside the Villa box, but Mark Halsey pointed to the spot and Wayne Rooney made no mistake from 12 yards. With nerves settled, United went on to dominate proceedings. Shay Given did his best to keep the Red Devils at bay, but Danny Welbeck bundled in a second for the hosts two minutes before half-time. Any hope Villa had of finding a route back into the game was extinguished on 73 minutes when Rooney poked home his second of the afternoon, and Nani stepped off the bench to put the seal on a convincing 4-0 victory in time added on.
Hunt
Swansea remain very much in the hunt for a top-half finish after bouncing back from a four-match losing sequence with a
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