Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini has come up with a novel way to get his players used to poor refereeing decisions – he regularly makes the wrong calls in training matches and punishes dissent by making his stars do extra push-ups.
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Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini felt a draw at West Ham was “not bad”, but admits it was not the result he wanted.
Aguero then found himself in the frustrating position of being an unused substitute for City’s next match against Sunderland but has since started every fixture ahead of the third-placed club’s Premier League match away to West Ham today. West Ham have now lost just one game in their last 10 and continue to climb the table in search for European football. “For me it would be good if they won the league”. “But that’s good – that shows how well we played”.
Slaven Bilic’s side, who slumped to a disappointing 2-1 defeat at Newcastle United last weekend, have reaped the benefits from summer signing Dimitri Payet’s return from injury of late, with the France midfielder scoring one and setting up another goal in their recent 3-1 victory at AFC Bournemouth.
Two goals from Sergio Aguero, the second of which arrived in the 81st minute, gave the visitor a dramatic 2-2 draw at Upton Park on Saturday after Enner Valencia had netted twice for the host.
City’s knockout encounter against Dynamo Kiev on February 24 will be at least their 40th of the campaign and Bilic said: “If they go out I do not think it will be about them dropping their level or quality but the demands of the Premier League”.
“They took the game to us early on and played well”. Payet has quick feet, great vision and creativity with an eye for goal, and he will certainly be a key player for West Ham’s chances of success this season.
Aguero made the switch from La Liga to Premier League as a 23-year-old, back in 2011 and has taken the league by storm since swapping the red and white of Atletico Madrid for the sky blue of Manchester City.
“I’m so proud of our team and Man City”, he told BBC Sport.
French left-back Clichy was not entirely happy with City’s overall performance and has challenged his side to improve during the upcoming matches if they want to seriously challenge for the title.
West Ham scored their first after just 55 seconds.
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“As always, I hope we are going to go for three points, and for that we need the personality to go there and play well. It was end-to-end because both teams play in an attacking way”, he said.
