Nolito rescues City after Lukaku’s moment of magic
For most managers, missing two penalties in one game would be a source of despair, but in the context of the purist principles of Pep Guardiola, this was one more step towards the football utopia that he is trying to establish at Manchester City.
“I’m not frustrated,” he said when asked to reflect on penalties from Kevin De Bruyne and Sergio Agüero, both of which were saved by Everton’s superb goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg. It was the fourth penalty Agüero has missed this season for City and Argentina and you wonder if his club might have to cast around for a third volunteer to take them from now on.
For Guardiola, however, there was only praise for a team that dominated possession and were undone by a moment of brilliance from Romelu Lukaku, who was unleashed on the counter-attack on an unfortunate Gaël Clichy. The City defender faced down Lukaku with all the confidence of the last man standing on the streets of Pamplona when they release the biggest bull of the lot, and the Belgian swept past him to score.
“I am sad for the players,” Guardiola said. “They deserved to win the game.
“They did absolutely everything to win the game. Football is beautiful for that reason. Sometimes you play bad and win the game … today we made absolutely everything [although] we missed the penalties of course.”
His team were excellent for most of the game against a very accomplished Everton side and, in De Bruyne and David Silva, who made the equaliser for substitute Nolito, there were the two outstanding players in the match. But City must face Barcelona on Wednesday having failed to win any of their previous three games and Guardiola conceded that “maybe” confithree dence would be low going to the Nou Camp.
As for Barcelona, they dispatched Deportivo La Coruña 4-0 yesterday afternoon. At least Guardiola can be sure of facing a side who come out to attack rather than the approach of Everton who defended heroically, despite the two penalties conceded by Phil Jagielka. Asked about the approach he would take in returning to face the club of his life, Guardiola saw the question as a fundamental examination of his principles.
“In the last decade they [Barcelona] dominate football and I love the way they play. I am going to accept to win or to lose and I will be judged on that. But I am sorry, guys, never in my life am I going to change the way I play football. It is the only way I have. I can make a lot of mistakes, I can be judged on many things. But I only have one power and my teams play the way I want. During that process there are stones, there are problems and what is nice is to improve on that.”
For the record, he meant stones, not Stones, and in fairness to the Englishman John, he had a good game against his former club. Guardiola also insisted his players would not be practising penalties because he regards it, rather magnificently, as a waste of his time on the training field. He did, though, send Vincent Kompany on as 90th-minute centre-forward, if only because City lacked height to convert the free-kicks they kept winning.
Asked about the effect on his team of the three games without a win – Celtic, Tottenham Hotspur and now Everton – Guardiola said “maybe” it would affect confidence. “It can happen, but you can analyse each game and try to see the reason why we didn’t win … that’s my job. The confidence and the mood is much better when you win but the guys are professional enough to be stable when you do – and when you don’t, you look at the reason why.”
Guardiola and Ronald Koeman, the two Barcelona old boys, were fulsome in their praise of one another. Everton manager Koeman went as far as to say that this City team, who remain top of the Premier League on goal difference from Arsenal, are the best team he has faced as a manager. He said he anticipated the three-man defence with which Guardiola started and picked strikers to counteract that but admitted that Everton barely had the ball for the first 20 minutes.
“I think we get a result today because the fighting spirit was amazing,” Koeman said. “[City are] the best team of my managerial career I have played against, really high tempo, we make some mistakes because the pressing was so high. I’m pleased with the point. We didn’t deserve more, I know. Maybe we didn’t deserve one, counting chances, two penalties missed, but football is unpredictable. The key to get a point was the belief and the work rate of the players.”
There was, it should be said, a lot of what you might describe as Guardiola jazz – the passing, the possession, the pressing – without the killer moments. Leroy Sané twisted Bryan Oviedo’s blood in the first half and Silva did his usual job of passing the ball around corners. Given his penalty miss, perhaps Agüero’s omission was not such a big factor but he might have converted one of the early crosses that City got into the box.
Silva won the first penalty with a run into the left channel of the Everton area where Jagielka fatally stuck out a leg to try to scoop it back. De Bruyne’s penalty was poor and Everton survived, with Ashley Williams in particular a dominant force.
Everton’s goal on 64 minutes was splendid. Lukaku played the ball backwards to Idrissa Gueye whose long pass forward was flicked on by Yannick Bolasie. From there Lukaku took over, galloping past Clichy and despatching a perfect left-foot finish. Agüero missed the second penalty, having been tripped by Jagielka. There was time for Silva to pick out Nolito for a header to equalise and one more great save by Stekelenburg from De Bruyne.