Home Football Guardiola frustrated by Manchester City’s defending

Guardiola frustrated by Manchester City’s defending

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Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola said that his team’s defending was not up to the mark in their 6-1 drubbing of Southampton today. An early own goal from Wesley Hoedt opened the scoring for Manchester City after just 6 minutes before Sergio Aguero doubled it 6 minutes later. Another 6 minutes later, David Silva added city’s third. Southampton pulled one back in the 30th minute thanks to Danny Ings’ spot-kick. Then, just before half-time, Raheem Sterling added a fourth for Manchester City. Sterling scored his second of the match and City’s 5th in the 67th minute before Leroy Sane added a sixth in stoppage time.

Following the match, Guardiola said that his team should have defended better. He said, “We did some very good things, the first 20 minutes was excellent and offensively we were very good, but we conceded a lot. The game gave me a good feeling, but at the same time, we didn’t defend well, although with 6-1 I am so satisfied. We were lucky to score the fourth goal in the final minute of the first half, because otherwise it would have been complicated after half-time.

As a team, he [Mark Hughes] demanded a lot, and today we were very clinical, especially at the start, and we had the feeling we would create a lot of chances. But when they had the ball in midfield we didn’t control the balls, they won all the second balls, we had to defend deeper and were not stable enough – and that’s why the fourth goal was so crucial.”

Manchester City return to the top of the table and they are now two points above Chelsea and Liverpool. Guardiola said that despite having the lead, other teams can give City a pretty tough fight. He said, “It’s not decisive to be top, it’s better to be there than be below but the distance between the teams is two, three or four points, it’s nothing. All three [Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea] are incredible, with Arsenal we have seen yesterday how good they were against Liverpool. Tottenham, despite having a lot of problems, are still winning games and we know how difficult it is to win at Wolves, and United are always there. It will be a really tough league, but it’s important we are stable like last season.”

Manchester City next play Shakhtar Donetsk on Wednesday. Their next Premier League is a Manchester Derby at home next Sunday.

 

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