Fernandinho has defended his Manchester City teammates after criticism from manager Pep Guardiola last weekend.
City beat Aston Villa 3-0 in the Premier League thanks to a much-improved second half performance, but Guardiola used his post-match press conference to suggest the first 45 minutes were not aggressive enough.
"Normally you use a word disagressive. I like to use this word aggressive when you have the ball," Guardiola explained on Saturday.
"Raheem [Sterling] was the only player who was aggressive with the ball in the first half. In the second half we imitate him. Be aggressive with the ball and we were not aggressive."
However, Fernandinho - who played the game at centre-back before getting a second booking in the closing stages - has a different take on the first half performance.
"I disagree [that it was a game of two halves]," he said.
"We started the game the way we start every game, trying to score goals and create chances, reduce space for the opponents. Sometimes you score early, sometimes not and in this case we didn’t score early this time and that’s why it looked like we suffered a bit."
Referring to missed chances and solid defending, Fernandinho went against his manager and said City were the better side in the first half.
He continued: "In general, though, we did a good game in the first half and second half but then in the second we score three goals in the second half, the first looks like a disaster, but if you see the clips they didn’t have clear chances to score, Ederson made just one save, David [Silva] missed a chance, Gabs [Jesus] missed a chance so I think it was an average performance from our team."
