Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini was fuming after his side lost 4-1 to Tottenham at White Hart Lane.
|||While Bacary Sagna was earnestly reflecting on Manchester City’s inability to be ‘killers’, Manuel Pellegrini was in another part of White Hart Lane and about to throw a tantrum.
The City manager had been asked about his post-match address to the players when he snapped.
‘What happened, we lost 4-1,’ said Pellegrini. ‘That is the most important thing, I am angry, I am not angry. No more questions? OK.’
He stormed off only to be told he was going the wrong way down the corridor and would have to return past that same group of reporters.
‘If you want to talk about football, we talk about football,’ he said on his way back. ‘But if you want to talk about stupid things then I do not answer stupid things.’
Except it is not stupid to wonder how he would talk to his players after a game like this, which City led through Kevin De Bruyne before being blown away by goals from Eric Dier, Toby Alderweireld, Harry Kane and Erik Lamela.
Physically, City were unpicked by sloppy individual errors and also because they were not intense enough against a young, energetic Spurs team; mentally they appeared to wilt as soon as Tottenham equalised. Form is not on their side and the strain appears to be showing.
City managed 22 shots but scored once here, having also had 27 in the 2-1 defeat by West Ham last week and 13 in the 2-1 loss to Juventus. They have lost three of their last four games and, while not necessarily a cause for a full-scale inquisition, that is a justification for concern.
‘We should have killed the game,’ said Sagna. ‘We conceded that (Dier) goal just before half-time, but it’s not the reason to come back sloppy in the second half.
‘We had to keep some composure and we didn’t have it. We were too nice, we lost too many duels and we have to be killers.
‘Maybe we have shown too much confidence. We have to keep working hard if we want to stay on top. We know we can be champions.’
City were not helped by awful officiating on Saturday but were also undermined by back-line errors. Joe Hart should be fit for Wednesday’s Champions League tie at Borussia Monchengladbach but doubts over Vincent Kompany and Yaya Toure, who came off with a hamstring problem, heighten the worry.
Any anxiety for Kane seems to have evaporated with his first league goal this season. ‘Maybe I shut up a few people,’ he said. ‘When you score like last season it becomes a drug, and when someone takes it away from you, you want to get it back. It was a good feeling to score again.’– Daily Mail
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