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Pep Guardiola admits Manchester City aren’t ready to win the Champions League after Schalke win


Pep Guardiola was happy with Manchester City’s performance against Schalke but claims they aren’t ready to win the Champions League (Getty Images)

Pep Guardiola was unhappy with the goals that Manchester City conceded during their 3-2 win over Schalke claiming they proved that his team aren’t ready to win the Champions League.

Sergio Aguero scored his tenth goal in his last seven appearances in all competitions to hand City the lead after 18 minutes, but Schalke went in at half-time ahead after former Tottenham midfielder Nabil Bentaleb had scored two penalties, both of which were controversially awarded via VAR.

It looked as though Schalke would hang on to win before Leroy Sane scored a sumptuous free-kick with five minutes remaining to level it up and then Raheem Sterling completed the turnaround with the winning goal in the 90th minute.

Although Guardiola was happy with the character that his team showed to win the game, he was clearly unhappy with their sloppiness in defence and stated that he had no issues with either penalty decision nor Nicolas Otamendi’s sending off in the second half.

Leroy Sane scored an incredible free-kick to draw City level (Getty Images)

‘We gave the first penalty, we gave the second penalty, we gave the red card so in that competition it’s not good, it’s too many things,’ Guardiola told BT Sport after the game. ‘Still we are not ready to fight for the latter stages, that is the reality. But the result is really good.

‘When asked whether he’d learned about his players,’ Guardiola said: ‘No, we played good. We started really well and played good but still we lost some easy balls which you are not allowed to do in that competition especially.

‘We conceded two penalties that were penalties. I think so. I trust VAR, I am a big fan of that so if it’s a penalty, it’s a penalty, yeah. I have arguments and complaints sometimes but not this one. I think it’s a penalty the first one and a penalty the second one and the red card.

‘In the second half we played with incredible personality like in last season at Anfield when we lost 3-0 but we gave two goals when they didn’t do absolutely anything. How many shots on target did they have [besides penalties] zero or one?

‘The game was quite good, in the end the quality from Leroy – in these kinds of games are won by big players – and the assist from Ederson and action from Raz [Raheem Sterling] made the difference but ok it’s not over.

‘I like to live these situations to realise that this competition is completely different, we gave too much to the opponent to still be in the game.’

Nicolas Otamendi was sent off for two bookable offences (Getty Images)

Guardiola guided City to the Premier League title with a record points total last season and also won the Carabao Cup which the club can retain on Sunday should they beat beleaguered Chelsea in the final at Wembley.

Given their recent form and the strength of their squad, City have been earmarked as potential quadruple champions this season as they remain in all three cup competitions and are top of the Premier League table on goal difference ahead of Liverpool.

Nevertheless, Guardiola, who has won the Champions League twice as a manager with Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, clearly still feels his side is lacking something in European competition.





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