Manchester City stayed on course for a third straight English League Cup title after Raheem Sterling scored two second-half goals in a 3-1 win at third-tier Oxford that proved tougher than expected for the Premier League champions on Wednesday.

They were joined in the last four by fierce rival Manchester United and Leicester. United swept aside fourth-tier Colchester 3-0, while Leicester beat Everton 4-2 in a penalty shootout after being pegged back to 2-2 after 90 minutes.

Aston Villa is the other team in the semifinals, having thrashed a heavily weakened Liverpool team 5-0 on Tuesday.

Sterling started in the unusual position of lone striker and provided more evidence of the improvement in his finishing, which has largely been credited to the coaching under City’s assistant manager Mikel Arteta.

Seemingly on the verge of taking charge at former club Arsenal, Arteta was in the dugout for City for perhaps the final time and saw Sterling show good movement to score within five minutes of a surprising equalizer by Oxford just 21 seconds after halftime.

Sterling added a third goal in the 70th minute, again from close range from a central position.

“I am there to put them in, no matter how they come,” Sterling said.

City, which took the lead through right back Joao Cancelo’s first goal for the club in the 22nd, allowed 18 shots – 16 coming in the second half – to a team that is in eighth place in League One. According to stats supplier Opta, that’s the most shots City has faced in a single match under Pep Guardiola in his 3 1/2 years in charge.

United scored all of its goals in the second half against Colchester, with Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial netting either side of an own-goal.

Jamie Vardy converted the winning penalty in the shootout at Goodison Park for Leicester, which was 2-0 up through first-half goals by James Maddison and Jonny Evans before conceding an equalizer in injury time to Everton left back Leighton Baines.


More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/Soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports


Steve Douglas is at www.twitter.com/sdouglas80

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.