After a fascinating press conference yesterday, renowned journalist and Spanish football expert Graham Hunter decided to focus on the winning habit of Pep Guardiola.
Despite having not won in four matches, Guardiola’s early record at City is exceptional and the Blues have played some beautiful football in the process.
Writing in the Scottish Daily Record, Hunter said on an early interview with Pep: “He was pointing out that the attractive, entertaining football his 2011 Barcelona side played was a means to an end.
“Not an end in itself. His football was a pulsating watch, but he only structured the team and the performances that we because he viewed is at the ‘best way to win’.
“Winning is his obsession.
“Guardiola’s employers might have changed twice since that Camp Nou interview in 2011 but neither his principles nor his hunger to win, games, trophies and minds have altered one iota.
“The idea that the Catalan dropped Aguero at the risk of losing a vital match to a rival against whom the forward had a prolific scoring rate simply to indicate to him that has no future and will be sold is just nonsense.
“The XI he picked to play Barcelona, and which was only trailing 1-0 thanks to a slip by Fernandinho when Claudio Bravo’s error of judgement practically ended the contest was picked to damage Messi and co.”
Elsewhere, City midfielder Fernandinho believes City can turn around Wednesday’s defeat in the Camp Nou when the Catalan club come to the Etihad Stadium on 1 November.
As reported by ESPN, he said: “The Brazilian believes the result was harsh on City but says they need to learn from the defeat.
“”The first goal was unlucky of me, I slipped in the box and Messi scored the goal. We know they are dangerous -- they have three great forwards and they scored three more goals.
“”It’s that level we want to reach. We will learn from these mistakes and I hope for the next game we can play better and of course get a better result.
“”The performance was good and the result didn’t reflect exactly what was the game during the 90 minutes because even with 10 players we pressed high to keep the ball, to play between each other.”
That’s all for this morning’s media round-up! Keep checking back on mancity.com throughout the day for more news and previews.
