3 hours Ago By Irishexaminer.com
Ilkay Gundogan insisted Manchester City are not far off turning around their form after they lost 2-0 at Juventus, but acknowledged they are struggling with confidence following a seventh defeat in 10 matches. "It's very disappointing. I feel like we had chances to score actually a few goals, but at the moment, it just feels like every attack we concede is so dangerous.
I don't know. I have a feeling sometimes we are a bit careless on the duels and instead of playing simple, we overcomplicate things," Gundogan told TNT Sports. "(Confidence) is a big part of it and obviously that's a mental issue as well.
I feel like you can see we are, one action we miss the ball or lose the duel and you see we drop immediately and lose the rhythm. They are able to break our rhythm with the smallest of things. "Yeah, even more we have to do the simple things and simple things as good as possible.
This is how you get the confidence back. "I feel like even to ourselves it is so obviously what is going wrong but it's just trying to find the switch to turn things around. "Even though we are not getting the results, it doesn't feel like we are far off.
At least that is my personal feeling, which may sound a paradox right now and a little bit stupid, but that is what I feel. "The only thing right now we can do is every single player individually has to question himself." Pep Guardiola declared himself proud of Manchester City's performance despite a 2-0 loss at Juventus doing damage to their prospects of qualifying for the Champions League knock-out phase.
"We play good. Really, really good," Guardiola told TNT Sports. "Of course some transitions happen, but I am so proud for these players.
They give everything, they tried and now we live in this period. "Hopefully we can change with good results. I know it is difficult, Turin is always difficult in the Champions League in Europe, but we play really good.
"Other days no, but today we have done it. We have done it really well and didn't lose many balls like what happened in the past. "We try, we arrive in the positions, but you know against Italian teams that defend so deep and so compact, it is not easy.
They are a master of these situations but even with that, we play who we are and the performance is there." Nevertheless, Man City have dropped to 22nd in the league phase of the competition with two matches left at Paris St Germain and at home to Club Brugge on January 29. Guardiola added: "We have two games.
We need one point, maybe one victory. We have two teams, the last one at home. "The situation is the game against Feyenoord and especially Inter Milan, we play really good.
"Feyenoord it is 3-0 after 50 minutes and that creates a problem, but when you go to Sporting and they have the moment they have in that moment, then go to Turin, go to Paris, our three games away were really tough and you have to accept it. "When we turn around, we will not forgot that period. We will appreciate it more than we have done in the past, what we do in the future and now it is continue to do it.
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