Pep Guardiola makes telling admission on Man City struggles despite beating West Ham
Share:
Manchester City equalled their biggest win of the season - and were given a brutal reality check by boss Pep Guardiola. Erling Haaland struck twice and Phil Foden was also on target after Vladimir Coufal’s early own goal as the champions continued their mini-recovery with a second successive Premier League victory.
It equalled the 4-1 win over Ipswich earlier in the season. But Guardiola said: “You judge the results, but we have seen over many years our level - and we are not at our level. "We won, so we are happy. The performance wasn't good. I'm so happy for the guys but in the first minutes we deserved to be losing 1-0 or 2-0 - and then we needed luck to score the first goal.
"We are still a strong team, we work hard. But you can't ask me if the old Man City is back. If you saw the game, we are not. "Normally when you are here many years, the players think they deserve something special with what they have done. That is a big mistake.
"They have to prove it again, again, again and again. Against Everton we played much better than today - and we drew and it was a big crisis and a disaster. "We have to be honest about ourselves. The best way to improve is to accept reality. We need to be more calm. If you are anxious you don't take good decisions. Of course the result will help us. We are not the best, okay, but we will improve. Absolutely.”.
West Ham boss Julen Lopetegui felt his team deserved more than Niclas Fullkrug’s late consolation. Lopetegui said: "It is not easy to explain the match. It was very strange because we deserved more - and it’s not easy to say that when you have lost 4-1.
