The future looks bright – Man City boss Guardiola pleased with young defensive pair for FA Cup 3-1 win
Man City boss Guardiola pleased with young defensive pair for Cup win
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola was pleased with his young defenders after their FA Cup win against Plymouth.
January arrivals Vitor Reis and Abdukodir Khusanov both featured for the 3-1 fifth round win.
“Now again we have central defenders out,” Pep said following our win. “I think we are going to miss Nathan (Ake).
“I’m so grateful to the club for bringing Vitor and Khusanov to the club otherwise we would not have any chance to qualify for the Champions League next season or fight for the FA Cup; we would have just Ruben (Dias).
“It’s a miracle they are here to help us because the problems we have, have happened all season.
“The mood is good. I have a feeling in the last month we have been much better. Against Liverpool we played really good. Against Chelsea really good. Forget about Madrid, they were better. We were miles away from where we could expect to be.
“Step-by-step, I see good things, everybody is connected. We are going to do the battles to be in the Champions League next season.”
Manchester City beat Plymouth Argyle 3-1 in the FA Cup to earn themselves a place in the quarter-finals as they chase a trophy
Kevin De Bruyne and Nico O’Reilly
Kevin De Bruyne and Nico O’Reilly
Pep Guardiola made 11 changes from the Premier League win over Tottenham as Plymouth Argyle came to the Etihad. After a 3-1 comeback win that booked Manchester City’s place in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, it would be a surprise if he did not make another 11 for the top flight trip to Nottingham Forest next week.
A win is a win, and City ultimately proved too good for Plymouth. It was another battle though that exposed some of the flaws that certain individuals have been having all season.
It would be churlish not to give credit to City for a victory that moves them to within one game of another Wembley trip. They may have had to do it the hard way, wasting 87% of possession in the opening minutes with a lack of attacking threat before marking poorly from a corner to allow Maksym Talovyerov to allow the Championship strugglers to dream again.
Conquerors of Brentford and Liverpool in previous rounds, this was no given for City and going behind was a costly reminder. An equaliser did not look likely in the remaining eight minutes of the first half, until Kevin De Bruyne’s free-kick was neatly headed in by Nico O’Reilly.
If that gave Guardiola an easier team talk, it still required patience, time, and the best striker in the world to come off the bench to down Plymouth. Moments after Erling Haaland had seen the keeper pull-off a remarkable close-range stop to deny him in the 75th minute, one of the corners that followed saw O’Reilly nod in his second of the game at the back post.
O’Reilly and centre-back Vitor Reis, making his home debut and only his second City appearance following one half at Leyton Orient last month, were the brightest points for the Blues on another afternoon that was tougher than it needed to be. Fitting the theme of the week, the two 19-year-olds were the youngest in Blue.
City’s manager declared that his forward lineup in midweek at Tottenham were the future as the club looks to continue the rebuild started in January. And Omar Marmoush, Savinho and Jeremy Doku saw their reputations go up without getting off the bench on Saturday as Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and Bernardo Silva failed to take their chance.
Add to that list Rico Lewis, Ilkay Gundogan, De Bruyne and Stefan Ortega and you get a sense of how underwhelming the afternoon was for City. The result was there, yet the performance left a lot to be desired.
De Bruyne continues to intrigue as he enters the final three months of his City contract with no decision made either way on if he will get another one. He was influential in some key moments, getting an assist for the first and scoring the third, yet apart from that it did not feel like he had the aura that he once possessed that made him dangerous every time he picked up a football.
Silva’s game – and Grealish’s for that matter – has never really been about goals and assists, but that feels more pronounced when he is asked to follow the exploits of the exciting Savinho and Doku. Gundogan got into some promising positions and hit the post, although that seemed to emphasise how his golden touch has deserted him; it is just two goals – both in the Champions League group stage – in 38 appearances since he returned.
Guardiola has rowed back on suggestions that there will be a mass clearout of his more experienced players in the summer, but at the same time the direction of the team and the squad has become clearer in recent weeks.
As far as the next game goes, the manager will not need to give too much thought before restoring his stars from Spurs.
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