Micah Richards felt Pep Guardiola\u2019s approach to facing Arsenal had more in common with the pragmatic stylings of Jose Mourinho or Sam Allardyce than it did the Catalan\u2019s usual way of doing things.<\/p>\n
The Manchester City boss came under scrutiny for picking the same starting line-up as in their two previous games, against Manchester United last Sunday and Napoli in the Champions League on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
City started the game well and went ahead after just nine minutes at the end of a rapid counter-attack that Erling Haaland both started and then finished off.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0Guardiola felt that the result was the right one overall after Gabriel Martinelli lobbed from a 92nd-minute equaliser \u2013 despite conceding that \u2018Arsenal were better and we were incredibly tired\u2019.<\/p>\n
That goal came from a defensive lapse on City\u2019s part as the back line were caught playing too high, allowing Eberechi Eze to play the ball through for Martinelli to go one-on-one with a stranded Gianluigi Donnarumma.<\/p>\n
Up until that point, though, Guardiola\u2019s side had spent the second half digging in and defending against a pretty toothless Arsenal attack \u2013 an approach that surprised former City defender Richards.<\/p>\n
MORE PREMIER LEAGUE FROM F365 Speaking on Sky Sports after the game, Richards said \u201cIt was a different type of City, and the possession stats (67% in Arsenal\u2019s favour) tell you that. When it comes to the game today, as well as Arsenal have started the season, you expect Man City to dominate the ball.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the second half [Pep] changed that and went to a 5-4-1 and went for transition-based football, which we\u2019re not used to seeing with Man City.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I understand what he means in terms of Arsenal being the better team today. [Arsenal] dominated the ball, they just couldn\u2019t do what they needed to do in the final third, and [Pep] adapted.<\/p>\n \u201cHow many times have we been here on a Saturday or Sunday and said managers need to adapt?<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not Pep\u2019s style of play, that\u2019s a Mourinho style of play or an Allardyce style of play \u2013 but it can be effective, as we saw. It was just that one moment of not concentrating.<\/p>\n \u201cBut in terms of the schedule, there\u2019s players on the bench that Man City could have played today. They\u2019ve gone with the same time as they did [against Manchester United and Napoli].<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s obviously because they were playing well: in the derby they did really well, against Napoli it was a tiring game because they\u2019ve sat in a low block and they\u2019ve had to try and unpick that.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, Arsenal just had too much energy for them, so he\u2019s adapted to the game that it was today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Micah Richards felt Pep Guardiola\u2019s approach to facing Arsenal had more in common with the pragmatic stylings of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15133,914,42,1100,8579,43,16909,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-35197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-arsenal","tag-front-page","tag-headlines","tag-home-page","tag-manchester-city","tag-news","tag-pep-guardiola","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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