Incredible team, destroyers of the Championship and difficult to play against: Pep Guardiola waxed lyrical about Leeds United at Elland Road on Saturday.
In what was another engrossing Premier League outing for the Whites, they went toe to toe with one of the division’s very best teams and could have beaten them.
City failed to make their early dominance pay beyond their solitary Raheem Sterling goal and paid the price when United got their act together and ultimately bested them on possession and shots on target.
Guardiola, for so long an admirer of Marcelo Bielsa’s coaching work, the praise was easy to mete out after full-time.
“It was an entertaining game, a good game, both teams tried to win from minute one until 90 minutes,” he said.
“We had really good moments in the first 30 minutes. We could have made a bigger margin in our result and after that they had good moments because they are an incredible team.
“They destroyed the Championship last season, they done so good so far, but in the last 10 minutes we were there and trying to win.
“It was a good game.”
The opening quarter of Saturday’s match was dominated by the visitors as they pressed high, forced errors and lay siege to Illan Meslier’s goal.
At one stage, a humbling evening was on the cards with a cricket score across the match statistics.
The flow of the game changed around the 25th minute however. Guardiola was asked why his side dropped off with their press and why the dynamic shifted.
“Because they are a good team and normally when you play with two teams the other one plays too,” he said.
“Sometimes they are good too and you have to accept it. You have to learn from this, but we never change our faith and our approach to try to take the ball as quick as possible.
“It’s a difficult team to face because they have five players behind our midfield line and complete movement attacking the spaces. It’s so difficult.
“They split like two teams. They have five players there and five players up front. It is difficult, they win duels, they are so aggressive.
“In these types of games they are good, good teams. If not, they wouldn’t have scored three goals at Anfield.
“When you have the chances we had in the 20, 30 minutes the game should have been over. Still you have to fight on this.”
