Manchester City v Everton: Premier League – live
Share:
Pep Guardiola takes to Amazon. [How do you find your rhythm again?] I don’t know. Winning games, basically. We can’t think beyond the next game; we are going to try. I love the club, the hierarchy and the people, my life in Manchester. We have a lot of problems, for many reasons and the target is to turn it round.
When we won everything in the past we had almost a full squad. Now we have eight important players out. When they come back they have to straight in the team, and with one game every three days they get injured again. We are in a cycle that we can’t get out of.
Kyle is unwell, Kevin and Gundogan [who are on the bench] have had flu the last few days, Jack [Grealish] is injured. Football is unpredictable. When you think, ‘Oh it’s going to be difficult’, maybe our form will change. [On the transfer window] If we can we have to add players, definitely. Saying that, I don’t know if it will happen because the winter transfer window is not easy.
Stats department City have won 14 and drawon of their last 15 games against Everton, so there’s that. Barney Ronay on City’s astonishing collapse. There is no obvious explanation for any of this. A team that were all aura, that carried their presence before them like a lance have become an anti-presence, stuffed shirts, straw men.
As ever the explanations tend to divide into the macro and micro view of history. Details will always decide a game. But we remain addicted to our sweeping narratives. So the more hard-headed analysis says: take the Ballon d’Or winner out of any team, chuck in one or two key defensive injuries, and there will of course be a drop-off.
