Pep Guardiola
The unexpected result at the Vitality Stadium proved a boon for Liverpool as Pep Guardiola’s men fell behind in the Premier League title race. Antoine Semenyo broke through early on, with Evanilson doubling the lead in the second half. A late goal from Josko Gvardiol wasn’t enough to salvage points for City, despite their efforts.
“Head down, back to work,” wrote Haaland on his Instagram story after the game. Gvardiol also posted on his Instagram story, sharing a moment with Tyler Adams, who he described as ‘brate’ – which means ‘brother’ in Croatian.
Pep Guardiola admitted his squad lacked the cutting edge shown by the Cherries.
Pep Guardiola said, “We couldn’t match up to the intensity. All the situations with the long balls, we couldn’t win it. And when you don’t win these types of balls to Semenyo and others, our central defenders and strikers have to defend deeper. We struggled to make our [game], but especially for that. In the game, for many reasons, they were higher than us. We have players with rhythm and the other players have a lack of rhythm because we could not train due to injuries. But we knew it. Ruben’s injury is muscular and will be out until the international break. And John has a fasciitis splinter in the feet and today he was not ready. Manu and Nathan made an incredible effort to be there in a demanding game. Kyle [Walker] has gone 18 or 19 days and only one training session with us and today he was there. This is the position we have, we try to have minutes to arrive fresh here. We could not handle. They were another pace and we could not handle it. It is what it is.”
