Manchester City midfielder Kevin De Bruyne added insult to injury last night by opening up on just how little preparation his side put in ahead of their 3-1 dispatching of arch-rivals Manchester United in the first leg of their EFL Cup semi-final tie last night.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer called the first half of football, in which his side conceded three times to Manchester City, and didn’t score, the worst half that his side has put forth this season. De Bruyne said that his team, which scored three times in the first 22 minutes en route to a 3-1 victory in the Old Trafford leg, accomplished it with just 15 minutes of training on Tuesday and not training with the tactical change at all on Monday.
He even went further and said that the result could have even been worse, had City been more inclined to make it so.
City went with a system change, utilizing a false nine and no recognized out and out striker as manager Pep Guardiola left both Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus on the bench at the beginning.
“We did 15 minutes this morning [Tuesday] — that’s about it,” De Bruyne said.”[On Monday] we didn’t train that, then this morning [Tuesday] we did.
“It’s not like we never did it before so we did it already against teams who prefer to play man against man [in midfield]. We’ve done it a couple of times.”
This will no doubt fire up the rivalry even more, as will what the big Belgian said next:
“I think we should have scored more but in the end 3-1 is a good advantage. On the counter, they’re very dangerous. I think they’re more dangerous when they play in that way than when they have the ball, and I think that we pressed them really well and we kept the ball.
“We know it’s not over but obviously it was a good game for us.”
City, who have won the tournament the last two seasons and four of the last six, have the home leg and a 3-1 advantage heading into it in three weeks time.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
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