Pep Guardiola praised Jérémy Doku and thanked Manchester City for giving him the “incredible present” of a 3-0 victory against Liverpool, in his 1,000th match as a manager.
First-half goals from Erling Haaland and Nico González and an outstanding 20-yard individual Doku effort after the break took City to within four points of the Premier League leaders Arsenal.
As half-time neared, Virgil van Dijk’s header was ruled out after Andy Robertson, standing in front of the City goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma, was adjudged to have interfered with play.
This was Guardiola’s 716th career victory and the former Bayern Munich and Barcelona manager said: “Thank you to the players and staff for giving me an incredible present against the most important opponent we faced in my time here. It has been a special night with my kids here.”
Of Doku, Guardiola said: “I think he will never be a top scorer, to be honest, but he’s demanding himself to be better, he listens, and has special attributes of dribbling. He was aggressive with and without the ball. We tried to help him and he played an outstanding game.”
Guardiola, for whom this was a 550th game as City’s manager, was asked about Arsenal dropping two points at Sunderland on Saturday. “I think Liverpool and us said: ‘Oh wow, Arsenal dropped points finally and conceded two goals.’ But I said to the players not to do it because yesterday Arsenal didn’t win. Do it because we believe in ourselves that we can play against the champions of England and show them we are ready to be there with them this season. Today we proved it – especially in the first half.”
Liverpool’s defeat was the champions’ fifth in their past six league games. Arne Slot was asked to assess the number in the context of their title defence. “It feels as if there are too many,” the manager said.
“The last thing we should think about is the title race and we should focus on getting result after result after result as we are seventh or eighth. The best time to judge the league table is after 38 but the next best is after 19 when everyone has played the same opponent.”
Slot was asked about Van Dijk’s disallowed header, ruled out after Andy Robertson was adjudged to be offside and interfering with play. “It is obvious and clear that the wrong decision has been made. He [Robertson] didn’t interfere at all with what the goalkeeper could do,” the manager said.
The Dutchman said that the referee, Chris Kavanagh, awarded John Stones’s goal for City in the 2-1 win against Wolves last season when Bernardo Silva was in a similar zone in front of the Wolves goalkeeper José Sá.
He said: “Immediately after the game someone showed me the goal that the same referee allowed – City against Wolves last season. So it took the linesman 13 seconds to raise his flag [today] to say it was offside. So there was clearly communication – but as I said, that could have influenced the game in a positive way for us.”
