Pep Guardiola admitted Manchester City did not play the game they expected at Chelsea but praised his players for battling through.
The Blues conceded four goals in a game for the first time since they lost 5-2 to Leicester at the beginning of the 2020/21 season – a game that accelerated moves to sign Ruben Dias as a belated Vincent Kompany replacement – in a thrilling draw that saw them tormented more than they have been all season. Former City players Raheem Sterling and Cole Palmer both scored, with the latter keeping his nerve to net a penalty in injury time for the game’s eighth and final goal.
The draw put an end to five straight victories for City in all competitions after a performance that they don’t often produce. However, Guardiola was delighted with the fact that his team had created enough chances to score four goals and praised his players for refusing to get complacent after winning the Treble.
“When you pass the ball to Raheem or Cole or Mudryk, who have the ability to dribble and run 40 metres, you defend in the box. If you are able to play so high, you can make a transition and run 4 vs 3 or 5 vs 4,” he said.
“It happened. We would have preferred to have a thousand long balls but Raheem won the duels, made process with [Moises] Caicedo to break the lines. They are good.
“We adjusted something at half time and were a little bit better to control the build-up of them because in the first half we had problems and this was the game.
“We can control more but I don’t remember a game when we came here with the chances that we had. Last year was much much worse by a million times than today and we won 1-0. We tried, we created a lot of chances but they did too because they are good. The talent cannot be controlled sometimes.
“What is important now is that we are top of the league and already qualified for the next stage of the Champions League. Where we came from when you have the tendency to be more soft and it is completely the opposite. We fought for every single ball. “Sometimes I give credit to the opponent to allow us to do some mistakes but in football it happens.
