Manchester City Bested by Arsenal, 2-0: Reaction & Tweets

Manchester City’s hopes of retainment of the FA Cup final was ended by Arsenal on what was a night of frustration at Wembley.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored in both halves of the semi-final as FA Cup holders City suffered their first loss at the national stadium in 10 appearances.

It was a bitterly disappointing way to end our defence of the trophy as they were denied by a resolute, determined Arsenal side.

On to the reaction-

Pep Guardiola Reaction

“We know the standards we need at this stage of competitions. I don’t have to tell them,” declared the City manager.

“They have to know it. They feel it, I think

“Maybe we are learning, maybe now, we will see.

“The first half was not good, and we struggled to play at our level. It doesn’t take a genius to know we have to increase the standard for Madrid.”

“Sometimes it happens. It’s an incredible run but in football you can lose. But the way we lost is what we are sad about,” the City boss continued.

“We didn’t make a good performance; we were not ready enough.

“If you don’t play for 90 minutes in a semi-final this can happen.

“We didn’t play good, we are human beings. The opponent played good, sometimes it happens.

“The only regret is that we didn’t play the first half like we played the second one. We had to change the set-up but we couldn’t do it.

“But the situation is in the first half we struggled to play. That’s why we lost the game.

“If you play the first half the way we did in second, maybe it would have been different. But we couldn’t do it.”

Ilkay Gundogan Reaction

“I think the energy we had starting the second half was exactly what we needed at the beginning of the game,” the German reflected.

“Sometimes one very bad half is enough to lose the game and it looked like Arsenal wanted it more to go to the Final today which was the most frustrating part.

“We had two kind of good chances in the beginning when we won the ball in front of the Arsenal goal but after that our game was sloppy and slow and there was a lack of energy.”

“At half-time, first of all the manager but also we to each other said this is not enough and we needed more energy and more rhythm in our game to create chances,” the German international admitted.

“The energy was good (in the second half), we still struggled to create clear chances even though we had good shots but obviously the second goal killed the game.”

“We have two more league games to play and then we have a big game against Madrid,” he said.

“We should definitely improve because the way we played today won’t be enough to go into the next round of the Champions League.

“We have to improve quite quickly because we don’t have much time… We need to try to do our best.”

Notable Tweets