On a splendid afternoon for Guardiola, whose side earned a deserved 2-1 win at the home of his great rival Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United, the only cloud on the sky blue horizon for the City faithful may have been Bravo’s erratic ways.
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Guardiola spoke after the game and praised the team’s character, the defense and spent quite a few minutes explaining why Claudio Bravo was so important to the victory.
“It’s really good, we defended the set-pieces [well] because they are stronger and taller than us and we defended really good”.
City were 2-0 up and utterly dominant when the Chilean came out to collect a routine free kick from the right and dropped the ball on the edge of the box into the path of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who gratefully volleyed home.
“I felt they [City] had fragility on the sides and the kid could give us in the second half what we didn’t get from Micki [Mkhitaryan] and Jesse [Lingard] in the first half”.
“The second half was an open game. We had counter attacks and we didn’t finish”.
The United manager said: “He [Rashford] is mainly a No.9 but, if you want to play him in different positions, we need to improve him. This was not our best game but we created four or five chances to draw the game”.
“You could see traces of Pep’s Barca in what they were trying to do at Old Trafford on Saturday”. Daley Blind as a central defender was a failed experiment under Louis van Gaal as well. “Their performances. So, of course, I am going to play other players”. I like the keepers to attack the ball and after what happened, the second half he continued to play and that’s a good thing about his personality.
John Stones backed Manchester City to continue with their risky style of playing out from the back.
“The way we train and the way we play has given me a lot of confidence”.
But while Jose Mourinho typically found a way to blame the referee for United’s defeat, he also blasted his players for somewhat bottling it under the weight of expectation. The second half was more hard – they played powerfully and with long balls. Then his team set about delivering a footballing lesson to United in the first half.
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“Until my last day in England I will try to play with the ball as much as possible. I know his future will be absolutely brilliant”. We have crossed a lot of balls and put them under pressure.
