Villa climb above City as Bailey rocks reeling winners

Bailey's deflected second-half strike at Villa Park moved Unai Emery's side above spluttering Manchester City into third place. Pep Guardiola's fourth-placed team have gone four league games without a win and sit six points behind leaders Arsenal.

After draws with Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham, the treble winners desperately needed to beat Villa to keep in touch with the Gunners. Instead, they produced their worst performance of the damaging run and could easily have lost by more than one goal.

City looked weary for long periods but with a trip to Saudi Arabia for the FIFA Club World Cup looming before the hectic Christmas schedule, there is little respite in sight. Reacting to questions this week about City's blip, Guardiola boldly proclaimed his team will definitely retain the Premier League title.

The City boss won't be panicking yet, after all they erased an eight-point gap to overhaul Arsenal in the closing weeks of last season's title race. But this was a major setback to their hopes of an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League crown.

Villa's 14th consecutive home league victory provided more evidence of the remarkable job done by Emery since he replaced the sacked Steven Gerrard last season.

Emery's team look genuine top-four contenders and Saturday's visit from Arsenal gives their manager, sacked by the Gunners in 2019, a chance to prove a point to his old club, who are only four points above them.

City had conceded 10 goals in their previous four games, so Guardiola shuffled his midfield, selecting John Stones, making his first appearance since November after a muscle injury, and youngster Rico Lewis in a line-up featuring six natural defenders.

Despite the defensive reinforcements, City were repeatedly