Man City Pep Guardiola Manchester CIty
Pep Guardiola Man City

Man City were knocked out of FA Cup by Chelsea on Saturday and according to some people, Pep Guardiola should take the major share of the blame, despite his players playing a really average game.

Chelsea were the better team from the very first minute and it was Hakim Ziyech’s 55th-minute strike which was enough to seal a win for the Blues. Man City, on the other hand, were slow to come off the blocks, as a result of which they kept chasing shadows for most of the match.

And according to a few experts, the fact that Pep Guardiola chose to make so many changes to his starting line-up was a big reason why Man City looked so chaotic and disjointed on Saturday.

“What could I say?” he told the reporters when asked about making too many changes to his starting line-up. “Yeah when you have two-and-a-half days to recover and you play away, and we had to travel longer than three hours, and everyone deserves to play…

“But don’t say we don’t pay attention. This team won three finals in a row in the Carabao Cup.

“Say the team played bad, but it’s a poor argument. You cannot do what we have done without paying attention. It was a tight game, we were not able to win, so again, congratulations to Chelsea.

“But if you believe we don’t pay attention, what would you say if we win with eight changes?

“Don’t say after the game we don’t pay attention just because we lose the game. Say it before. Not after. We respect the FA Cup – we came here to win.”

Man City played a really intense game vs Borussia Dortmund in midweek and again, they take on Aston Villa in the Premier League on Wednesday. So we really can’t blame Pep Guardiola for resting and rotating some of his players vs Chelsea.

But the main problem for Man City happened in midfield due to Fernandinho and Rodri. Whenever both these players have started together, Man City have not looked promising going forward and it was a repeat of the same this weekend as well.

Pep Guardiola still has three more competitions to look forward to this season but falling out of such a major tournament will surely be a big blow.

Read: Man City suffer an enormous injury blow vs Chelsea in the FA Cup.

Read: Chelsea join Man United in the race to sign this La Liga centre-back.