INCREDIBLUE
City hammer NINE past Burton
PEP Guardiola told his players at half-time to keep pushing for as many goals as possible out of respect for Burton Albion and for the Carabao Cup.
The City manager named a strong line-up for the first leg of their semi-final against the League One side and were four goals to the good at the break.
Things only worsened for Nigel Clough’s men from that point as they conceded another five to end up on the wrong side of the biggest winning margin ever in an English domestic cup semi-final.
If picking such a strong team was a sign of Guardiola’s intent, he hammered home the message at half-time that there should be no mercy shown.
“We spoke about that at half-time – to play simple, let them run and try to score more goals. It’s the best way to respect the competition and respect the opponents.
“If you are 4-0 up and forget to continue, you don’t have respect for the competition or your opponent.
“We spoke about travelling to Burton for the second leg with as big an advantage as possible, but we didn’t expect this.
“It’s good for us because we can play the second team and players who don’t play regularly. In this incredible schedule, we have a little bit of a break in that week to prepare for the other competitions.”
Ruthless in the game, Guardiola made a point of going over to each Burton player after the match and invited Clough for a glass of wine after the game, to which the Burton boss quipped he may need a bit more. While former Blues midfielder Clough was rightly proud of his team’s achievement, City’s manager is hungry for his team to pick up as much silverware as possible.
“I wanted to congratulate them for an incredible tournament,” said Guardiola of his gesture to the Burton players.
“When you get to the semi-finals and you have beaten Premier League teams and teams like Aston Villa or Middlesbrough, the reason why they are here they deserve incredible credit.
“We are not a team that have a lot of titles in our museum so every chance to make a final you have to take. It doesn’t matter what happened last season, you have to take it.
“The only way is to take it seriously. I said to the players, respecting the opponent is to be who we are. That’s what we have done and that’s why we are pleased.”