Manchester City's title hopes extinguished with draw at Bournemouth
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BOURNEMOUTH, England, May 19 : Manchester City's Premier League title dreams were snuffed out on England's south coast on Tuesday with a heartbreaking 1-1 draw at Bournemouth that handed Arsenal an unassailable lead at the top, and their first league trophy after a 22-year wait.
Needing victory to keep alive the race ahead of Sunday's season finale, City were undone by Eli Junior Kroupi's brilliant first-half strike at Vitality Stadium, extinguishing City's hopes of a seventh league title for Pep Guardiola in what is expected to be his final season after a glittering decade as manager.
"The players gave everything, absolutely all of the season fighting through difficult, difficult, difficult circumstances until the end," Guardiola told Sky Sports.
"We were close to arrive in the last moment but on behalf of all Manchester City and my team, we congratulate Arsenal and Mikel (Arteta) for this Premier League. They deserve it."
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The draw left City on 78 points, four behind Arsenal. Bournemouth - unbeaten in 17 league games and sixth on 56 points - secured European qualification for the first time.
Kroupi fired Bournemouth in front in the 39th minute to break the deadlock in a tight game when Adrien Truffert was played through down the left. Truffert picked out the 19-year-old Frenchman, who took a touch before unleashing a brilliant curving shot just inside the far post past Gianluigi Donnarumma, who was rooted to the spot.
City's Erling Haaland pulled back a goal deep in injury time when Rodri's shot bounced off the post and dropped to the Norwegian.
Haaland swiftly grabbed the ball out of the back of the net, desperate for a second goal, but the final whistle sounded seconds later to seal City's fate.
City's Antoine Semenyo had briefly celebrated what he thought was the game's opening goal but it was chalked off for offside.
Guardiola's men were playing their third game in six days, and coming off a heady FA Cup win over Chelsea on Saturday, and the manager said it showed.
"A tough game — we knew it," he said. (Bournemouth) have 12 days to prepare, to play with energy. The players up front have this energy that they had, (while we played) three days, three days, three days.
"We fought, first half was really good. Second half, we started really good... at the end, we find a goal but too late."
City had surged into contention with a formidable 15-match unbeaten league run that stretched back to mid-January, breathing down Arsenal's neck and setting up a gripping race to the finish.
After slipping to third last year, in a campaign that followed an unprecedented run of four successive Premier League titles, Guardiola's side had rebuilt momentum at just the right moment and looked poised to mount another late charge for the trophy to put alongside this season's FA and League Cup silverware.
That push ultimately fell short when it mattered most.
"Of course we are not happy," Haaland said. "I think everyone in the club that (will) be here next season should feel a big fire in their stomach. This should be motivation for us to go next season and take the Premier League back, because now it has been two years without winning it.
"It should be the biggest motivation, for me and for every single person in Manchester City."
Bournemouth, whose manager Andoni Iraola is leaving at season's end, put on a top performance and narrowly missed several late chances of a second goal.
Donnarumma dived to claw out Evanilson's late stab at the net, then a sprinting David Brooks got behind City's back line before ringing a hard shot off the post.
"At the beginning of the season you didn't imagine it," Iraola told Sky. "We have a chance to fight for the Champions League in the last game (at Nottingham Forest) and we really deserve this, especially for the game we played so well. We have not won the game but it does not matter."
With Bournemouth having slammed the door on City's league title hopes, their final game against Aston Villa on Sunday now carries no weight in the standings and instead looms as an emotional occasion, expected to serve as Guardiola's farewell.
What might have been a high-stakes conclusion has been stripped of its drama, leaving City to close out the campaign with a sense of reflection, on both a remarkable era and a night on the south coast when it dramatically came to an end.
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