Pep defends City after Silva’s burn
PEP Guardiola defended the performance of his City players after Bernardo Silva had called it unacceptable.
The Blues bossed the ball at Old Trafford but didn’t do enough with it and were caught out in the first half when a quick free-kick from Bruno Fernandes was turned home by Anthony Martial.
Having failed to get themselves back into the game, City suffered further disappointment in injury time as Ederson threw the ball straight to Scott McTominay, who added a second goal for the home team and wrapped up the match.
Speaking immediately after the game, Bernardo said the performance was not one that could be accepted by the players.
“It was a bad game for us. Not acceptable. We didn’t start badly and were playing quite well until we conceded,” he said.
“We know how good the Manchester United players are on the counter-attack, very aggressive. So our performance was not acceptable.
“A team like ours cannot lose this many games. We need to check what’s not going right and try not to make so many mistakes.”
But Guardiola disagreed with that verdict.
The City manager spent several questions in his postmatch press conference defending the performance of his team and insisting both that they played well and that they are not far off the performance level that saw them win consecutive Premier League titles with the two highest points tallies ever seen in the competition.
“Unacceptable? I don’t agree with Bernardo,” he said when the player’s words were put to him.
“Over 90 minutes we played really well.
“In the first half we need to be a little bit more aggressive in the final third [Ilkay] Gundo[gan] and Bernardo needed more aggression in their position but in the second half we did it a little bit better.
“In general we played well and congratulations to United on the victory.”