Pep Guardiola has given his assessment on what Manchester City did well against Leeds United and also areas where there is room for improvement.
Winning is what Manchester City do best, but recording a victory can take on many different forms in regards to the performance.
It would be fair to say Man City were not at their best against Newcastle a week ago and the same is true of their display against Leeds on Saturday.
However, Pep Guardiola and his team did enough to secure yet another vital which could end up meaning a whole lot more by the end of the season.
Pep Guardiola admits Man City’s shortcomings
Guardiola usually says things as they are, instead of beating around the bush and he has not sought to overlook Man City’s mistakes against Leeds.
Still, there were some positives to take from the away team’s performance, including City’s passing accuracy and rock solid defending.
The manager told Man City: “A huge victory for us. Erling [Haaland] is a massively important player for us, but we behaved really well. My idea of the game is that they started well, but we expect it here.
“Leeds are so intense. After that we did what we are good at for the last decade, a thousand million passes, and make the vibe of the crowd a little bit calmer.”
Continuing his honest assessment of the game, Guardiola added: “We missed a little bit more intention up front with the movements, but when they got fatigued the last 15 or 20 minutes we had more intention and to pass the ball to try to score a goal – and we found it at the end of the first half.
“We dropped in second half normally, but that didn’t happen today: we were incredibly focused. We didn’t create much but we didn’t concede anything. It was long balls where we struggled with the second balls. It was a little bit more uncomfortable, but we defended really well.”
Man City are doing things the hard way
Questions are bound to emerge as to how sustainable it is to for Man City to keep clinching three points by the narrowest of margins.
However, recording victories is all that matters and Guardiola will not be too bothered how his team manage to win games, so long as they do.
City are not making life easy for themselves and there are areas where improvement is clearly needed, but the end result is that the gap at the top of the Premier League table is back to only two points.
