Man City beats struggling Wolves 2-1

WOLVERHAMPTON, England (AP) — John Stones came up with an injury-time goal again as Manchester City narrowly avoided a major setback by beating last-place Wolves 2-1 in the Premier League on Sunday.

Stones headed home a corner in the fifth minute of second-half injury time and the goal stood after referee Chris Kavanagh was called to the sideline monitor to review whether Bernardo Silva was interfering with goalkeeper Jose Sa from an offside position.

Kavanagh’s decision denied Wolves just a second point of the season and enraged manager Gary O’Neil on the sidelines, while the win put City two points above Liverpool ahead of its home game against Chelsea later Sunday.

“We are not used to winning games at the end,” said Man City manager Pep Guardiola, whose team has won four straight league titles by regularly overwhelming most opponents. “It is a good flavor for us.”

It also extended City’s unbeaten streak to a club-record 31 league games, beating a mark Pep Guardiola’s team had set in 2018.

With prolific striker Erling Haaland held scoreless for a third straight league game, City’s defenders provided the goals instead after Jorgen Strand Larsen had given the hosts a surprising early lead in the seventh minute.

Josko Gvardiol curled in a superb right-foot shot from outside the area to equalize in the 33rd minute but Wolves then repelled wave after wave of City attacks before the late intervention from Stones, who also netted a last-gasp equalizer against Arsenal in the eighth minute of injury time last month.

“These moments don’t come often for us,” Stones said. “We’ve come up with a few over the years and today was one of them.”

Wolves’ compact defense mostly limited City to long-range efforts as they searched for a second-half winner, with Sa stopping shots from outside the area by Ruben Dias and Jack Grealish after earlier making two great one-handed saves in the first half.

But the goalkeeper couldn’t react quickly enough to keep out Stones’ header from Phil Foden’s corner. The goal was initially ruled out after the linesman raised his offside flag because Silva had been positioned in front of Sa, but the VAR asked Kavanagh to review it after judging that the Portugal midfielder had not impacted the goalkeeper.

“I am trying to remain calm,” O’Neil said. “I have been involved in a few of those and not had many go in our favor so was expecting that outcome. There is some gray area that can go either way and once it was like that I wasn’t confident it would go our way.”