Manager Pep Guardiola has hailed both Manchester City’s creativity and defensive stability in Saturday’s Manchester Derby victory over United.
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Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has indicated that he will start with Marcus Rashford against Feyenoord on Thursday and also test out other players in the wake of the club’s derby flop. The contest saw the visitors, particularly in the first half, again produced the sort of slick, passing football with which their new manager had been associated.
Midfielder Lingard, who started Saturday’s 2-1 Manchester derby defeat to City but was substituted at half-time, has two years to run on his current deal.
But it was ex-Barcelona boss, Guardiola, who came out on top.
“We want to go through in the Champions League”. I made a couple of decisions because I thought the individual qualities of certain players would give me what I wanted.
“If you ask me whether we are ready to compete in Europe, we are not ready”.
The forward has seen his playing time limited since the arrival of Special One, but he could get his chance to impress when his side make the visit to Rotterdam on Thursday.
“The season is just starting, we don’t lose, we learn. We had counter-attacks and we didn’t finish”.
One of the reasons why we played well in the first half is because Claudio Bravo read our build-up really, really well..
“At the end this is the fourth game and in the Premier League three points, so nothing [much] changes”, he told a news conference.
“But overall, it is a big compliment for the performance, because I know how hard it is to come here and play as we did, especially in the first half”.
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Bailly was caught out by De Bruyne’s opening goal. I felt City had the fragility on the sides and the kid could give us in the second half on the sides what we didn’t get with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Jesse Lingard in the first half.
