By Toby Davis
LONDON Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:18pm EDT
1 of 7. Manchester City's Edin Dzeko celebrates his second goal against Manchester United during their English Premier League soccer match at Old Trafford in Manchester, northern England March 25, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Phil Noble
<span id="articleText"><span id="midArticle_start"/> LONDON (Reuters) - A clinical double from Edin Dzeko helped Manchester City move second in the Premier League with a 3-0 win at Manchester United on Tuesday while Arsenal's title hopes all but evaporated in a 2-2 draw with Swansea City.
<span id="midArticle_1"/>Manchester City took the lead after 43 seconds at Old Trafford and never looked back, exposing United's soft center almost at will with Dzeko and Yaya Toure netting in the second half to inflict another painful defeat on home boss David Moyes.
<span id="midArticle_2"/>City, in ominous form after a 5-0 win over Fulham on Saturday, have moved into the slipstream of Chelsea and are three points behind the league leaders with two games in hand.
<span id="midArticle_3"/>"It was an amazing game from the first to the last minute," striker Dzeko said on Sky Sports.
<span id="midArticle_4"/>"We wanted to start playing our game early, to press high and get an early goal which we did.
<span id="midArticle_5"/>"After that it was all about us. We could have had another goal (in the first 10 minutes) but we scored two more in the second half."
<span id="midArticle_6"/>Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was, like United's Moyes, facing difficult questions after his side conceded a 90th-minute own goal from Mathieu Flamini to draw with struggling visitors Swansea on the back of a 6-0 thrashing at London rivals Chelsea.
<span id="midArticle_7"/>It looked like Arsenal would claim all three points when second-half goals within a minute from Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud canceled out Wilfried Bony's opener.
<span id="midArticle_8"/>Everton made it four wins in a row to maintain their own push for Europe as they beat Newcastle United 3-0 away with England hopeful Ross Barkley, Belgium striker Romelu Lukaku and Leon Osman all on target.
<span id="midArticle_9"/>Arsenal stay fourth on 63 points, two behind third-placed Liverpool who host Sunderland on Wednesday. Everton are up a place to fifth, six points behind Arsenal with a game in hand in the race for a top-four finish and Champions League football
<span id="midArticle_10"/>EARLY ONSLAUGHT
<span id="midArticle_11"/>Manchester United should have approached the night buoyed by back-to-back wins, but instead began like a rabbit caught in the headlights of City's breathtaking early onslaught.
<span id="midArticle_12"/>The second hand was still on its first lap of the clock when City took the lead, with Dzeko finishing into an open goal after a Samir Nasri shot hit the post.
<span id="midArticle_13"/>United were in total disarray as City, who have now won five of the last six derbies, continued to pile forward, with David Silva finding pockets of space in between the hosts' midfield and backline to weave his magic and keep United chasing shadows.
<span id="midArticle_14"/>United could not stem the flow of City's attacks and Dzeko's second 11 minutes after halftime put the match to bed, with the Bosnian easily shaking off his marker Rio Ferdinand to steer a corner from the right in at the near post.
<span id="midArticle_15"/>The coup de grace was administered by Toure in stoppage time when he drilled a low shot into the bottom corner.
<span id="midArticle_0"/>"I think we have played a very good side, playing at the sort of level we are aspiring to," Moyes said after his second straight 3-0 home league loss following a defeat by Liverpool.
<span id="midArticle_1"/>"We need to come up a couple of levels ourselves because at the moment we are not there."
<span id="midArticle_2"/>TOP-FOUR DOGFIGHT
<span id="midArticle_3"/>After the embarrassment of Saturday's thrashing by Chelsea, the onus was on Arsenal to show they were still in the title race and were not going to be dragged into a dogfight for a top-four finish.
<span id="midArticle_4"/>While the north London side have struggled against their top-four rivals, they have proved more than capable of dispatching the league's lesser lights.
<span id="midArticle_5"/>Swansea, however, were up for a scrap and scented blood, taking the lead after 11 minutes when Bony directed a precise header into the net for his 11th league goal of the season.
<span id="midArticle_6"/>The Swansea threat seemed to have passed when Podolski leveled in the 73rd minute with a volley and Giroud put the hosts ahead soon after by poking home from close range.
<span id="midArticle_7"/>But with the clock ticking down calamity struck and Flamini, the player Wenger was criticized for not starting against Chelsea, deflected the ball inadvertently into his own net.
<span id="midArticle_8"/>"You wonder how we could draw a game like that, they had nothing and in the end it was 2-2," a bemused Wenger said.
<span id="midArticle_9"/>"At 2-1 we became too conservative because of what happened on Saturday and instead of continuing to attack it worries us more to keep the score."
<span id="midArticle_10"/>Arsenal's slip means Everton might fancy their chances of chasing them down and finishing in the Champions League places.
<span id="midArticle_11"/>They opened the scoring at St James' Park when Barkley was allowed to run unchallenged from inside his own half before firing past Tim Krul into the top corner after 22 minutes.
<span id="midArticle_12"/>They doubled the lead when Gerard Deulofeu picked out Lukaku to poke the ball home seven minutes after halftime and Osman then beat Krul at his near post to make it 3-0 late on.
<span id="midArticle_13"/>(Reporting by Toby Davis,; editing by Ken Ferris and Pritha Sarkar)
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