A clearly furious Manuel Pellegrini described Manchester City’s 4-1 defeat at the hands of Liverpool as “a complete disaster” before claiming he had never seen his side play as badly.
“I am more than angry, it is difficult to understand why we played so poorly,” the City manager said. “In defence, in attack and in possession I have never seen my team play in the way they played tonight. It was not one name or another name who was to blame it was the whole team. I was not happy with the performance of all 11 players. It was a complete disaster.”
Pellegrini withdrew his captain, Yaya Touré, at half-time and switched his midfield in an attempt to get back into the game, though City never looked like recovering from a 3-1 half-time deficit.
“We tried to play in a different way in the second half, to press higher, but the result was exactly the same,” he admitted. “When you play so badly in all areas of the pitch it is impossible to expect anything from the game. I will not explain the starting XI, I would pick the same one again but this performance was not normal, we could have conceded three or four more. It was not our night and we have to turn the situation around quickly because we have an important game [against Juventus] on Wednesday night.”
Jürgen Klopp, so despondent after losing at home to Crystal Palace, did not feel nearly so alone after witnessing hundreds of City fans leaving the ground early. “That result was very satisfying, and it was deserved,” the Liverpool manager said. “I didn’t feel it was possible to lose our last game, but we did, and now we have won the three points back. Not all of our players have been with national teams and I tried to bring in as many as possible who had actually trained together over the past 12 days. It seemed to work well, but at half‑time the players were a little surprised at being comfortably in the lead.
“Maybe that is what we still have to learn, to play to our own strengths, because there is certainly quality in the squad. This result shows that, and it shows that we are still improving. We counter‑attacked really well, but I think we can defend better, so it was not perfect. I thought the most important thing was that you could see the development in our game. We could possibly have won by more than 4-1 but there is no need to be greedy. A result like this should help the boys start to believe in themselves.”
