Premier League week 11: Manchester City 3-1 Arsenal
Arsenal had no answer to City’s firepower and logically conceded the loss in Northern England. Down 2-0, summer signing Lacazette gave hopes back scoring his 6th in the League for the Gunners.
But the Citizens have been cruel and extinguished any possible Arsenal comeback with a third goal a few minutes after Lacazette’s reduction. However this game was full of controversy with the third goal being validated despite an offside position.
Coach City, Pep Guardiola on the win:
“All I know is everybody can beat us. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past. You can win the Champions League and then lose the day after. The other teams want to beat us. It depends on us. It is so important if we want to fight more to win the title.
Last season against the title contenders, we were able to win just twice. This season in November, we are already winning three times. We spoke about this. If you want to win the title, you have to beat Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and the other teams at the top. So well done to my team. It was a good performance again against Arsenal. We created a lot of chances and a lot of ‘almost chances’ where we missed the last passes.
Against Arsenal, the game is never over. But considering we played a Champions League game on Wednesday, and they rested all week, we were so strong and kept going all together. We spoke about tiredness. We said you will be more tired today, but I said you cannot be more tired in your head.
The body language in the second half was good. Arsenal made a good high press. When we counter attack in that position, we missed the last action and that’s why it was difficult to close the game. But we won. We deserved it. Three more points. My wish now is the players come back healthy from the international break. I cannot control that. It’s a friendly game so be intelligent, be smart, be wise”.
Coach Arsenal, Arsène Wenger on another road loss:
“I think the fact that you tell me that it’s an offside goal shows enough. I don’t want to take anything away from City’s quality but it happened at a moment where we were really in the game, at 2-1. It killed the game. We had two offside goals here last year and we had one again this year. Apart from that, I felt that we started well in the first 10 minutes. After, we suffered because we played too deep for 25 minutes. In the last 10 minutes [of the first half] we came back into the game. In the second half, it was an even game. It was us chasing the game and them always being dangerous on counter-attacks. I felt that we put a lot of effort in and at 2-1, you could feel that we could come back. The 3-1 was an immense result for them, an unexpected present. But it is as it is. At 3-1, you have to go forward. We played with four offensive players and every counter-attack looked like they could score. But that’s the history of the game that created that.
