CITY Gael: Players are to blame, not the boss
CITY players have taken the blame for their Monaco flop.
Gael Clichy says the team failed to put Pep Guardiola’s plan into action as the Blues lost 3-1 to crash out of the Champions League on the away goals rule on Wednesday night.
And the French left-back also revealed that Guardiola told them at half-time that if they were going to get knocked out, he wanted them to go out playing in the way he has tried to teach them.
There has been plenty of focus on Guardiola who, for the first time, failed to reach the semi-finals of the competition after seven good seasons with Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
But Clichy said the blame lies with the players, who have to quickly get the defeat out of their season ahead of a big match with Liverpool on Sunday.
“We have to take responsibility because he never told us to play deep,” he said.
“Since he took over at the club his philosophy is to go forward, to press the team we’re playing, to win the ball high up the field and then pass the ball to a player who can be creative and make something happen and we just didn’t do it.
“When we play like the manager wants we can create problems for any team but we have to look forward to Liverpool now because the season is not finished and we have to make sure we finish strongly.” Clichy said the first half was very disappointing as City gave up their two-goal lead with barely any resistance. “It’s not the way the manager wants us to play,” he said. “We didn’t really create any chances. We dropped, we didn’t press and he doesn’t like that so his message at half-time was, ‘If you have to go out of this competition, at Gael Clichy least go out playing the way you want to play.’
“I think we started the second half in a different way. We pressed high, we had so many chances.”
Guardiola made it plain ahead of the game that he expected his team to start on the front foot and go all out for the win, rather than allow themselves to ponder on their first leg lead.
Bacary Sagna also said the failure was down to the players.
He said: “We forgot to play in the first half, we forgot to fight as a team and press as a team and defend as a team.
“We gave them too much respect and against this type of players we put ourselves in danger.
“I expect a reaction from the team against Liverpool on Sunday. I expect more desire, more passion.
“We did show passion in the second half but it’s not enough. First we have to recover as it was a difficult game and then we have to think about Liverpool.”