Manchester City have suffered their first defeat of the season after Chelsea beat them 2-0 at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.
Many thought this day would never come and that Pep Guardiola’s team would go the whole season without a loss.
Unfortunately, though, the match belonged to Chelsea.
The Blues took the lead in the first half through a superb strike from N’Golo Kante and them it was a well-timed David Luiz header in the second half which secured the three points for Maurizio Sarri’s men.
Chelsea were clinical and despite a surge of attacks for Manchester City, the London outfit stood firm and managed to neutralize the threat.
And for the first time this season we saw Pep Guardiola giving an excuse about a poor performance – instead of accepting the defeat with a bit of dignity.
Pep Guardiola claimed that his team lost the game due to the absence of Sergio Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne and not once did he appreciate Chelsea’s superb play.
“It always happens when they are not here. When we won, nobody asked me about the people that are not here,” Pep Guardiola told a post-match news conference.
“Of course I would prefer to be with Aguero, Kevin, [Benjamin] Mendy and everybody, but the guys made an incredible performance today. If someone can assure me that if we had them we would have won… nobody knows.
“Now my feeling, knowing the opponent, the performance was outstanding. I have the feeling that last season when we won, this season we played better. But last season Kevin had the ball … and got the goal. Game over. Today we missed it a little bit. We will improve for next games, we have tough games [in the league] and in Europe in February.
“Gabriel is more a guy in the box,
“I knew that they would stay high. In the end, they waited a little bit lower and I didn’t expect that.
“But when they are higher we wanted a guy like Riyad [Mahrez] or Raheem to make a one-against-one action. That was our idea. That’s why we decided today to play Raheem more centrally than wider.”
The loss means, Liverpool will now be the Premier League leaders until the end of the week and with City suffering their first defeat of the season, Jurgen Klopp’s men remain the only side who are yet to taste defeat in the league.
