Birmingham
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola admitted that his side is struggling a little bit and also gave an honest assessment of City’s defeat to Aston Villa, stressing the better team won. City lost 1-0 to the Villans, courtesy of a Leon Bailey deflected strike in the 74th minute on Wednesday. With a win Aston Villa leapfrogged Manchester City into third place with a club-record 14th home league win in a row. City were well below par and are now winless in four league matches, remaining on 30 points, now six points off the top. Speaking to the media at Villa Park in the aftermath of the loss, the manager was quick to heap praise on our opponents. The better team won. Aston Villa was better than us. They are well organised, fast and [have] physical players and team and they are able to control many aspects. That is the reason why they are up there, playing good football and we could not do it. It’s my duty, my job to find the way to come back, Guardiola was quoted by club’s official website. I give credit to Aston Villa, first of all. They do it. The first half we struggled to follow what we spoke about. (We said) something at half-time and it was much better, the team had another dynamic but we didn’t find the players to make the assist, the cross, the pass. We arrive there but we didn’t have the feeling that ‘oh we are going to do something’. And we miss it, he added. Manchester City attempted just two shots in this match, with both of those coming in the 11th minute. It’s the fewest shots ever attempted by a Pep Guardiola team in a match within Europe’s big-five leagues, while the 22 from Aston Villa was the joint-most faced by a Guardiola side.
