Guardiola warns players against switching off in ‘Fergie time’
Pep Guardiola has told his Manchester City players they must guard against another Cristiano Ronaldo late show in “Fergie time”.
City have won five of their past eight visits to Old Trafford, including three of their past five league matches at the home of their rivals.
But, after seeing Ronaldo rescue points late on for United for a third successive Champions League match in Tuesday’s 2-2 draw against Atalanta, Guardiola believes his players will be asking for trouble if they switch off at the end of either half.
United also scored late in the first half against Newcastle, Everton and Spurs. “Be ready [for] the last minutes of the first half and the second half, I’m pretty sure they will call Sir Alex Ferguson to install the ‘Fergie time’ because I think it’s going to happen,” the City manager said.
It will be United’s first appearance at Old Trafford since losing 5-0 to Liverpool a fortnight ago. But Guardiola said it would be impossible for City to “cut and paste” Liverpool’s performance, and that he did not have the players to tackle United in the way Jurgen Klopp’s side did.
“We have no quality to play like Liverpool play – we play a different way. Football is not copy and paste,” he said. “If you want to do it like Liverpool you want Jurgen Klopp, [Sadio] Mane and [Mo] Salah to come. We cannot play like Liverpool play because we have different players and different ways to play.”
Guardiola believes Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will have learnt a lot from the Liverpool capitulation. “Maybe right now if United played Liverpool they would play in a different way – it would not be the result they did at Old Trafford because everyone learns from it,” he said.
“After this defeat they [United] changed the set-up [to a back five] against Tottenham and it worked and they changed the set-up against Atalanta, but after they got an injury to [Raphael] Varane they changed to [a back] four. I know from playing United, when they are losing they put on a lot of strikers and when they are winning they put on more defenders.”