DBasia.news – Manchester City appeared perfectly when they defeated Newcastle United. However, according to Pep Guardiola, his team is still less fierce when it comes to scoring goals.
City needed three points when they hosted Newcastle at the Etihad Stadium, Sunday (27/12/2020) am, WIB. Considering the competition at the top is so tight and positions one to ninth are only six points apart.
City appeared dominant from the early minutes and did not give Newcastle the opportunity to develop the game. There were a total of 11 attempts, six of which were on goal and controlled 72% of ball possession.
Unfortunately, of the six attempts on target, only two resulted in a goal due to Karl Darlow’s toughness under Newcastle’s goal. Raheem Sterling scored a goal in the first half followed by Ferran Torres in the 55th minute.
Three points has put City in fifth position with 26 points from 14 matches. The win kept City on their 13th clean sheet in all competitions this season, the most among teams in Europe’s other top five leagues.
The combination of John Stones and Ruben Dias was so solid in guarding City’s defense, which actually collapsed at the start of the season. However, when the back line is solid, City’s front line is in trouble.
The absence of a pure striker as a coating for Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus is the cause. Aguero went back and forth to the treatment room, while Jesus was absent due to being exposed to the corona virus.
Manchester City have just scored 21 goals, losing to Leeds United who have 25 goals in 15th position. However, they only conceded 12 goals, the best among the other teams.
“A difficult match, weather conditions and opponents that made it challenging for us to score,” said Guardiola as quoted by BBC Sport.
“We have to play with a tempo like this. The placement of the players today was so perfect, unfortunately we couldn’t score more goals. However, this is a good result and we reaped three more points,” he continued.