Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has defended his team over Garry Neville’s foul accusations.
The former Manchester United defender accused City of deliberately making fouls even when they don’t have the ball. Neville cited examples from their 1-0 win over Tottenham Hotspur on Monday. Guardiola said his team in the past, now and in future will never involve themselves in acts of cheating.
“I completely don’t agree with that. We are a team that tries to play and, of course, when there is a counterattack sometimes there is contact, the action is a foul but as a team, we don’t think about that. Never have my teams been focused on doing something wrong against the opponents. I completely don’t agree with those comments that we are a team that is looking for this kind of situations because it never happened in Barcelona.” Guardiola said.
“It never happened in Bayern Munich and it can never happen at City; and will never happen in the future in my career. Never. If you talk about the game against Spurs, you can’t discount the pitch we played on. Maybe you could see the grass so in that situation contact is maybe more common but I don’t think we are a team that makes a lot of fouls.
“Normally when a team has 65 or 70 per cent of the ball we cannot kick the opponent. We can kick each other, okay, but we have the ball. Normally when for every 10 minutes you have the ball for seven of them there is less option to make fouls. I don’t think we’re a team that make a lot of fouls in games.
“But I can assure you never in my life in one meeting or one idea did I say to my players: ‘You have to do that to make problems to the opponents, to not let them be who they are.” Guardiola continued.
Man City will play Southampton in the bid to win and open the gap at the top of the table after Liverpool drew 1-1 with Arsenal.
