Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has admitted that his players struggled to match Bournemouth’s intensity in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat.
This comes after City’s record run of 32 Premier League games without defeat was brought to an end by strikes from Antoine Semenyo and Evanilson at the Vitality Stadium..
Josko Gvardiol‘s header with just under 10 minutes of normal time remaining gave the champions hope but, despite a late siege on the Cherries goal, it wasn’t to be.
Guardiola believes his players were not as sharp as their opponents.
“We couldn’t match up to the intensity,” said Guradiola during the post-match press conference.
“All the situations with the long balls, we couldn’t win it. And when you don’t win these types of balls to Semenyo and others, our central defenders and strikers have to defend deeper,” he added.
“We struggled to make our [game], but especially for that. In the game, for many reasons, they were higher than us.
“We have players with rhythm and the other players have a lack of rhythm because we could not train due to injuries. But we knew it.”
Guardiola added that the long injury list is beginning to take its toll on his team.
“This is the position we have, we try to have minutes to arrive fresh here. We could not handle. They were another pace and we could not handle it,” concluded Guardiola.
