Fernandhino sticks up for team-mates

FERNANDINHO has defended his City team-mates after criticism from manager Pep Guardiola last weekend.

The Blues beat Aston Villa 3-0 in the Premier League thanks to a muchimproved second-half performance, but Guardiola used his post-match press conference to suggest the first 45 minutes were not aggressive enough.

“Normally you use a word disaggressive. I like to use this word aggressive when you have the ball,” Guardiola explained on Saturday.

“Raheem [Sterling] was the only player who was aggressive with the ball in the first half. In the second half we imitate him.”

However, Fernandinho - who played the game at centre-back before getting a second booking in the closing stages has a different take on the first half performance. “I disagree [that it was a game of two halves],” he said.

“We started the game the way we start every game, trying to score goals and create chances, reduce space for the opponents. Sometimes you score early, sometimes not and in this case we didn’t score early this time and that’s why it looked like we suffered a bit.”

Referring to missed chances and solid defending, Fernandinho went against his manager and said City were the better side in the first half.

He continued: “In general, though, we did a good game in the first half and second half but then in the second we score three goals, the first looks like a disaster, but if you see the clips they didn’t have clear chances to score, Ederson made just one save, David [Silva] missed a chance, Gabs [Jesus] missed a chance so I think it was an average performance from our team.”