City boss Manuel Pellegrini has apologized for his massive error regarding goals scored in the Champions League.
Pellegrini failed to realise that one more goal for Manchester City would have seen them top their group, beating current holders Bayern Munich to the top spot. He had chosen not to put on their goal-scoring machine, Sergio Aguero, when City had 27 minutes to snatch 1st place away from Bayern.
City were 2-0 down following early goals from Muller and Gotze, but had turned the tie on its head in the 62nd minute through a James Milner goal to give Pellegrini’s side the lead. He spoke ahead of their important clash with Arsenal on Saturday and admitted he had miscalculated but inists the substitutions he made were positive ones.
“After, when they scored their first goal, I knew that 3-1 was not enough because they had a better goal average. It needed to be 3-0 or 4-1. When they scored the second goal, I didn’t continue to think about this. That was my mistake but normally not many teams score four against Bayern Munich. I tried to think more about how to arrange the game that we were losing 2-0.”
“So I first of all recognise my mistake but I don’t have any guilty conscience. We always tried to score the fourth goal but we couldn’t.”
“Remember that I brought David Silva off on 70 minutes for Alvaro Negredo, not for Vincent Kompany or Dedryck Boyata and we went with two strikers, trying to score. In the last five or seven minutes, they had 80% possession of the ball so I brought on Rodwell so we could win the ball back and attack, rather than defend. I repeat once again that I apologise for me and for my team that we weren’t able to score four goals against Bayern Munich.”
City won the match 3-2 in the end, which left them second in their group, meaning they could potentially face the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona and PSG.
By Phil Wellbrook
