Oh give it a rest
Pep’s at it with claim as City gear up for Euro tie
IF Manchester City make the Champions League semi-finals this week, this shock defeat will have been a price worth paying.
Pep Guardiola left out Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and Ruben Dias – arguably his three most influential players – ahead of Wednesday’s crunch return leg at Borussia Dortmund. Oddly, the City boss refused to admit their omission was down to the significance of that tie but his team selection said otherwise. But with a 14-point lead before the game, he could afford to make wholesale changes, even resisting the temptation to bring on De Bruyne late on to try to win it. Given City have
1 MAN CITY
2 LEEDS UTD
failed to get past the quarters of the Champions League in Guardiola’s time at the Etihad, Wednesday is their biggest game of the season.
Not that he was in the mood to acknowledge it. He said: “Listen, I made changes but maybe I will play the same team in Dortmund.
“I’ve said many times that they play because I want to let them play, not because I reserve these players. “I demand of every team I send out that they win. I don’t select on the basis of competitions. I select every team to win the specific game. With 27 of 29 games won, the rotation was exceptional, wasn’t it? And now it’s a problem? “If you tell me that if the others play you can assure me 100 per cent that we’d have won, then you can be a perfect manager. I don’t know if I’d made another selection what would have happened.
“I just know that with the guys who played we conceded a goal that was avoidable, so we have to be more aggressive, more concentrated. We created enough chances to win but we didn’t do it.”
Guardiola is right – more often than not he gets his team selection correct.
But here, he would have been better served conceding he took a gamble with his line-up – because he could – and it ended up backfiring.
City dominated after Leeds skipper Liam Cooper was shown a straight red card just before half-time for a
reckless tackle on Gabriel Jesus, following a VAR review.
But Marcelo Bielsa’s men soaked up the pressure, defending with diligence and discipline, before snatching the win in added-time, Stuart Dallas claiming his second of the game, after a swift break and composed finish.
Dallas had put Leeds ahead in the 42nd minute, with Ferran Torres levelling for City with 14 minutes to go.
But in their eagerness to go on and win the match, City left themselves vulnerable on the counterattack and so it proved.
A fourth league defeat of the season will not irk Guardiola and his players for long, with all eyes on Wednesday and the chance to take a step closer to the one trophy to so far elude City in an otherwise silverwarepacked past decade.
They play because I want to let them play, not because I reserve these players