Pep Guardiola cut a shocked figure when asked about Ilkay Gundogan’s remark that Manchester City are ‘over complicating’ parts of their game.
City suffered a second successive away defeat in the Champions League on Wednesday, falling to a 2-0 defeat to Juventus in Turin.
Goals from Dusan Vlahovic and Weston McKennie sunk Man City to 22nd in the Champions League table, leaving them one point off the elimination zone with two games to go.
Man City midfielder Gundogan spoke to TNT Sports after his side’s seventh defeat in ten and admitted they were lacking in confidence.
“It’s very disappointing,” he said. “We had chances to score a few goals but at the moment it feels like every attack we concede is just so dangerous.
“I don’t know, I have a feeling sometimes we are a bit careless with duels, instead of playing simple we over complicate things and we missed the right timing to release the ball. Just lose the ball and give them counter attacks.
“We are built for possession, keep the ball, be strong, if you can’t do anything don’t lose it. At the moment it’s not working out for us.”
He continued: “[Confidence] is a big part of it and obviously that’s a mental issue as well. You can see that. We sometimes, one action we miss the ball, lose a duel and you see that we drop immediately, lose the rhythm, they are able to break our rhythm with the easiest of things. They don’t even need to do much.
“You have to do the simple things as good as possible. Work hard again, this is how you get confidence back, even in the game if you miss something, by doing small and simple things you get confidence back at the moment we are always doing the wrong things.
“I feel like we know exactly what’s going wrong. If you look at the most part of games even today we actually didn’t play bad, created chances, just missed to score, in these kind of games if you give away once chance it’s not easy to bounce back.
“We know what’s going wrong it’s just finding the switch to turn things around because even though we are not getting results, it doesn’t feel like we are far off.
“As long as we don’t find that click it’s going to be tough, the only thing right now we can do, every single player needs to question themselves, to do better, how the player can individually sacrifice more to contribute to the team so we can get collectively back on our way.”
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But when his manager Guardiola came to analyse the game, he was visibly stunned by one of his star’s comments.
“We played good, really, really good,” Guardiola said. “We missed the last part, the last action and we arrive, so.
“We concede a few, some transition happened. I’m so proud of these players, they give everything and they tried and we live in this period and hopefully we can change the results.
“I know it’s difficult the result. It’s difficult in the Champions League, in Europe, but we play very good.”
Asked about Gundogan’s take on players over complicating things, Guardiola faced formed into a frown of confusion.
Quizzed on whether it was a confidence issue for his players, he paused before asking her to clarify what his player said.
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After Gundogan’s comment was repeated, Guardiola said: “No, no. We have done it today. Other days no, but today we have done it.
“We have done really, really well. We didn’t lose many balls that [would have] happened in the past.
“We tried, we arrived in the positions but you know, Italian teams defend so deep and compact it’s not easy. They’re a master in these kinds of situations.
“We played who we are, we miss the result, but the performance is there.”
Guardiola is now on his worst ever Champions League run.
For the first time in his managerial career, Guardiola has failed to win three consecutive matches in the group and or league phase of the Champions League.
He has instead seen out one draw and two losses.
For the Citizens, meanwhile, it’s their longest such run since the 2014/15 campaign, which saw them draw two and win two.
And that’s not the only horror stat on the ever-growing list Guardiola’s out of form side have endured.
Man City face Manchester United on Sunday in the Premier League.
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