City must learn to finish teams off after Foxes scare – Sterling
Raheem Sterling feels Manchester City need to learn to be more ruthless after holding off an unlikely Leicester comeback in a high-scoring Boxing Day thriller.
The Premier League leaders were made to sweat before eventually prevailing 6-3 in an enthralling encounter which manager Pep Guardiola described as a “rollercoaster”.
City had raced into a 4-0 lead inside 25 minutes only to be pegged back to 4-3 before late goals from Aymeric Laporte and Sterling – his second of the game – finally secured the points.
After wins over struggling Leeds and Newcastle by an aggregate score of 11-0 in the previous two games, Sterling felt this was a wake-up call for the champions.
“It was a game we needed to finish off,” said the England forward, who has now scored eightgoalsinhislast10appearances in all competitions.
“Itwasagood(first)45(minutes) but these are games we have got to put to bed. That is the challenge.
“We have got to keep that concentration and in the first 20 minutes of the second half we didn’t have that.
“We are disappointed to concede those goals but we kept the focus, kept trying to playandgottheresultweneeded in the end.”
City’s victory was their ninth in succession and, with second-placedLiverpoolnotin action, it took them six points clearatthetopofthetablehalfway
through their campaign.
“It has been a decent start so far,” Sterling added. “We need to keep the focus and go intothenewyearwiththesame mentality. We need to keep going and that is all we can do.”
Leicester felt the full force of City’s attacking power early on as Kevin De Bruyne opened the scoring inside five minutes and Riyad Mahrez added a second from the penalty spot
after Youri Tielemans fouled Laporte.
Ilkay Gundogan tapped in a third and Sterling fired home City’s second penalty after he himself was brought down; Tielemans again having been the guilty party.
But for Kasper Schmeichel it might have been more but the Foxes rallied after the break with the inspirational James Maddison pulling
one back. Ademola Lookman grabbed another and Kelechi Iheanachofurtherreducedthe deficit but City ultimately had too much.
“They countered us and we got punished,” said Sterling. “Everytimetheyattacked,they created chances.
“But we are happy we got the win in the end and we want to keep that going. It is nine games(inarow)inthePremier
League now.”
Foxes boss Brendan Rodgers, who had been without a number of players through injury,waspleasedwiththespirit shownbythevisitorsinthesecond half.
Rodgers said: “We came in at half-time and the scoreline didn’t reflect the game. They’d had nine shots and we’d had eight but we were 4-0 down and in a tough position.
“We made a change and we challenged the players, we said we needed to try and win the second half and show the mentality and character in the team. We are a team that never unravel mentally and physicallyandthatwouldbean easy thing to do, but the playersshowedanincrediblespirit and played some great football to get to 4-3. Even at 5-3 we had two really good chances.”