Aguero's hat-trick powers City
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Shanghai Daily, September 11, 2011
Sergio Aguero scored a hat-trick as Manchester City maintained its perfect start to the English Premier League season with a 3-0 victory over Wigan Athletic yesterday while fellow title hopeful Chelsea won 2-1 at Sunderland.
Argentina forward Aguero took his tally to six goals in four games with a first-half strike and two after the break in a one-sided game in Manchester where the scoreline could have been much worse for the visitors.
Captain John Terry opened the scoring for Chelsea in the 18th minute before Daniel Sturridge, picked ahead of misfiring Fernando Torres, doubled the lead with a cheeky backheel in the second half while Sunderland scored late to set up a nervy end.
Arsenal was finally sent some good luck after a bad start to the season when a blunder by Swansea City goalkeeper Michel Vorm handed Andrei Arshavin a 40th-minute winner in a 1-0 victory at the Emirates Stadium in London.
Liverpool's unbeaten start came to a halt after it lost 1-0 at Stoke City, courtesy of a Jonathan Walters penalty, while Tottenham Hotspur won 2-0 at Wolverhampton Wanderers helped by a goal from debutante Emmanuel Adebayor and Everton drew 2-2 at home to Aston Villa.
Champion Manchester United was making the short trip to Bolton Wanderers later, looking to match City's 100 percent start to the season.
Meanwhile, Sunderland's Ghana striker Asamoah Gyan is to join United Arab Emirates side al-Ain on a season-long loan after human "parasites" affected his form, manager Steve Bruce has said.
"Anyone who has seen Asamoah play will know that he hasn't been himself in recent months. This option suits all parties at the present time and the club is well-protected in the deal," Bruce said in a club statement yesterday.
Bruce, who hopes to have Gyan back at the Stadium of Light firing on all cylinders next term, said on Friday that hopes of a move to a big club had affected one of the best players from the 2010 World Cup. "All the parasites, as I call them, hover around. People are in his ear constantly trying to engineer a deal for him," Bruce said.
Sunderland acknowledged that talks about a permanent move had taken place before the loan deal was agreed.
Former Ghana striker Abedi Pele played for al-Ain in the late 1990s, but Gyan will join a current squad containing mostly UAE players.
In Italy, champion AC Milan and Lazio shared four first-half goals in an exciting 2-2 draw as the delayed Serie A season finally kicked off at the San Siro on Friday.
Lazio was first to get off the blocks as the new strike force of Miroslav Klose and Djibril Cisse wasted little time in opening their Serie A accounts with a left-foot strike and header, respectively, to put the visitors 2-0 up inside 21 minutes.
But the Rossoneri's own forwards clicked soon after as Zlatan Ibrahimovic tapped in and Antonio Cassano scored with a rare header to bring the scores level before halftime.
Napoli was traveling to Cesena yesterday with the remaining fixtures of the season kickoff played today.
After a players' strike had postponed the scheduled start to the season, Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri felt his side had taken a while to get up to speed.
"It was a difficult first half hour," he told Sky TV. "We couldn't handle their counter-attacks, gifted them too much space and we paid for it. We had no rhythm maybe because we hadn't played for a long time or perhaps because of the international games in midweek."
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