Pep Guardiola hails win over Liverpool as one of the best of his Man City tenure
By Tom Gott
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has confessed Saturday's 4-1 win over Liverpool was one of his side's best performances of his seven-year spell at the Etihad.
Despite falling behind early on, City produced a composed response that saw Julian Alvarez equalise and they ramped it up in the second half, ultimately blowing Liverpool away with goals from Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and the excellent Jack Grealish.
It was a dominant performance and Guardiola was keen to give it the level of praise it deserved.
"Minute one to minute 93 was a perfect performance - even though we concede a goal we played really well," he told BT Sport after the game. "They always have threat on transition but we played really good. One of the best performances in my seven years.
"The players knew we weren't playing bad. One goal down and we continued to do it and had just a bit of chat at half time and were lucky to score the second goal. But then at 2-1 the game was stable."
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He later added to BBC Match of the Day: "From the first minute until the 93rd minute, it was almost the perfect performance. Even 0-1 down, we were playing well and Jack made a good save to stop a potential 0-2.
"The way we played, the way we found our spaces for how they defend. Our intensity, high pressing.
"Of course, we fight to chase Arsenal and they are not used to being in this position - always in the last few years, they fight to win the Premier League and all the competitions. Last season they were two games from a quadruple and now they are playing to be in the top four - it would be incredibly difficult for us as well.
"As a part of that, you have to perform the way we performed. We were so stable and stuck to the plan. All the players were magnificent.
"Always we have fought against Liverpool, the way they defend, the way they play is so difficult for us. But today the players were magnificent. We played really well in all departments so hats off to our players.
"Tell me one player who didn't play well? There was no one who was not playing well."
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