Pep Guardiola has disagreed with Bernardo Silva’s observation about how Manchester City have approached big games this season.
City will play their most important match of the Premier League season to date when they take on Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday.
The Gunners are currently five points clear at the top of the table, although they have played two games more than closest chasers City.
Arsenal have drawn their last three league fixtures – most recently a 3-3 thriller against Southampton – while City have won six league games on the bounce and are unbeaten in 16 matches in all competitions.
Guardiola’s squad have plenty of experience when it comes to navigating important, potentially season-defining fixtures, but this season they appear willing to take a more defensive approach when needed.
City conceded the majority of possession across both legs of their Champions League quarterfinal against Bayern Munich, something that Bernardo Silva highlighted last week.
“What we understand now is that, before, we used to think ‘oh no, we need to be dominating the game for 90 minutes, controlling on their final third’,” the midfielder said after a 1-1 draw in Munich saw City through to the semi-finals 4-1 on aggregate.
“This competition when you play against Bayern Munich, PSG, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool, wherever, you need to accept that sometimes you have to defend, you have to be consistent.”
What does Guardiola think?
When Guardiola was asked ahead of the Arsenal game if his team are more comfortable with ‘suffering’ than they used to be, he didn’t quite agree with his star midfielder.
“I heard these words from Bernardo but I try to plan the game to avoid that as much as possible, I don’t like to suffer and the opponents has chances,” Guardiola said.
“I try to minimise that as much as possible. Every single day I work to have 90 minutes control of the game – score a lot of goals, concede few chances – but at the same time you have to accept sometimes it won’t happen because sometimes the opponent plays with the ball, you can play badly and can lose the game and the opponent can do many good things.
“The difference is maybe because the defenders are proper defenders [four centre-backs in back four] and defend well and that helps us to be solid but tomorrow this is not going to happen for the way they play.”
