After Manchester City’s recent losses, Erling Haaland has pledged to “work even harder and come back fighting.”
Haaland missed a penalty at 2-1 after crashing the ball against the bar as Sporting crushed City 4-1 in the Champions League on Tuesday. After losing to Tottenham and Bournemouth in recent weeks, the outcome means that City has now lost three straight games for the first time since April 2018.
Additionally, Haaland has not been playing at his most prolific level; after scoring ten goals in his first five Premier League games, the striker has only scored one in his last five. Haaland addressed the team’s and his recent difficulties in a social media message.
He said, “Only one way to move on from last night—work even harder and come back fighting from this,” about the loss to Sporting. Bernardo Silva, another City star, acknowledged that they were “in a dark place” before this.
“It’s disappointing because we’re a bit in a dark place right now,” Silva remarked in an interview with TNT Sports following the sporting match. It appears that everything is going wrong. We give up too quickly and fail to score our chances, even when we are playing brilliantly.
There’s no doubt that we need to examine our performance. Additionally, we must recover soon because it will be extremely difficult to recover from these losses. It’s football. Reasons for what is happening to us are hard to come by.
“This club hasn’t lost three straight games in seven and a half seasons that I can recall. It appears that this club is now headed in the wrong direction. Fortunately, we are still in a strong position, particularly in the Premier League, despite losing these three games.
“We are still competing for everything in the major competitions despite losing three games. Of course, we must do better. We need our injured players back, and tonight’s performance is simply insufficient.”
Pep Guardiola, the manager, disputed Silva’s claim, claiming his team played “really good football” in Portugal. “We performed pretty well here, but poorly against Bournemouth. The third and fourth penalties were unnecessary, so that’s the only thing I regret,” he remarked.
“At the beginning of the season, we anticipated that it would be difficult, and here we are. I want to tackle it and motivate my guys because I enjoy and cherish it. This is how life is. We go on. What ought we to do? We return to Manchester and get ready for the Brighton match. I will not give up.”
