Nathan Ake has ended up as the savior who broke Man City’s bewildering long hoodoo at the new Hotspurs starium as he scored the only goal of the game as the FA Cup holders ended their goal drought.
Evidently the happiest man in City was Pep Guardiola who was full of praise for his Manchester City players’ ‘unbelievable’ performance in their 1-0 victory over Tottenham. They had finally broken the goal drought jinx at Spurs’ new home ground that saw them reach 100 shots without scoring there with Nathan Ake’s late goal securing a long-awaited for win against Spurs.
Guardiola was overjoyed: “Deserved it? I think so but football is about scoring, not conceding and the statistics were really good today. Unbelievable. The performance was top, top class. These players prove again the reason why they have done what they have done in the past.”
It had at first appeared that City had scored earlier, but Oscar Bobb was ruled offside after Foden had been stopped from close range by Vicario.
Spurs were clearly lagging behind in the first half and only managed one shot all match while Manchester City persistently pushed for a goal with the likes of Bernardo Silva, De Bruyne and substitute Jeremy Doku all having chances. A dangerous delivery by De Bruyne caused chaos in the Spurs box. However it was Ake who finally delivered the goods with his goal scored with just two minutes left on the clock.
Visibly upset after his team’s defeat, Ange Postecoglou confessed: “We fought hard to stay in the game but to be honest that’s all we did, we stayed in the game.”
“They’re a top team. They’re the benchmark. We’re not there yet and we’re under no illusion about that. I just felt that all of the second half was ok, the first half we were just too passive in a lot of our play and allowed them to get a rhythm.”