Pep Guardiola said he could but wouldn’t complain about the West Ham goal as he lamented the continuing struggles of his Manchester City team. The Blues arrived with an emphatic record at the London Stadium but were stunned in the first half when Michail Antonio hooked home from a Vladimir Coufal cross. The goal infuriated City players who felt that there was a handball in the build-up. Ilkay Gundogan appeared to stop as he expected the whistle, while the protests to the officials continued while the second half was ready to start.
Pep Guardiola said “The games we play all the bench with one or two academy. We have plenty of quality, I’m not complaining about that. I could complain about the first West Ham goal but I didn’t say anything. The reality is we struggled with our preparations, we don’t have enough regeneration. Our striker [Gabriel Jesus] was inured in the first game, Sergio came back after four or five months, Kevin [De Bruyne] was injured. We have plenty but to play three or four competitions every three days you need all the squad and it is more difficult without that. We knew it, we struggle, this is the reality. We struggled with many injuries, lack of preparation and no recovery time between the incredibly tough games that we played so far but the players did absolutely eveyrthing. They fought, they were incredibly tired at the end so now we are just thinking to recover and think about the next game in the Champions League.”
