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Pep Guardiola speaks on the difficult game his team had in their victory over Crystal Palace.
Manchester City's manager Pep Guardiola revealed that he dreads playing Palace at Selhurst Park as his team always find difficulties when they match up against Viera's side at home.
Manchester City grabbed a slender 1-0 win thanks to a late penalty by Erling Haaland to beat Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.
City grind out result against Palace
While they were inefficient in front of goal for large stretches of the game, Manchester City had a breakthrough thanks to a Haaland penalty kick in the 87th minute.
Pep was speaking to Sky Sports after the game, and he explained that games at Selhurst Park are always tough for his team. He said even when his team plays well, like he thought they did today, they struggle to get goals against Palace at their home ground.
He said he was happy with the way his team played; he was a bit dissatisfied with the ineffectiveness of offensive transitions, but he was happy with the all-around effort of his team, despite what he explained to be a strong defensive performance by Palace.
"My experience is that every time we come here it has been very tough,” Pep said, per the BBC.
“Always I have the feeling when we come here, we play really good thinking how good they are. We always struggle because we want to score more goals.
"Everything pleased me, we missed the counterattack a bit. It is not easy, they defend six players in the box and Erling Haaland had two men marking him, Gundo [Ilkay Gundogan] had a man, it was a question of patience.”
He went further to point out the offensive strengths of Palace, name-dropping Wilfried Zaha, Michael Olise, and Eberechi Eze.
He praised Palace's composure and the dangers they posed offensively.
"They have weapons. [Wilfried] Zaha is there, [Michael] Olise, [Eberechi] Eze, they are incredible strikers and they have incredible threat. They have composure, great attacking players. It is a question of patience. They will waste time so we have to push to do it.
Pep on the title race
Pep also weighed in on their pursuit of Mikel Arterta's Arsenal. He explained that despite Arsenal's incredible run, his team are still in the title race.
He further pointed out that his team have found themselves in this position before and they have navigated through it.
"Of course Arsenal is on an incredible run. Still we are there. Arsenal make 50 points. Here in the typical winter game, a difficult one, we were there all the time and then we won it.
“Now we have to do absolutely everything and next Tuesday and Saturday hopefully the Etihad can live one of the best nights we have lived and we can do it again."
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