Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea was a match where Manchester City needed to persevere, and somehow they did it.
“I don’t understand how we survived today,” an exasperated Pep Guardiola said after a late goal from Bernardo Silva gave the holders a 1-0 win. “I don’t understand.”
Games like this are normally when City’s determination to win everything catches up with them.
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Three years ago, Guardiola made a lot of changes after beating Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League quarter-finals, only to lose 1-0 to Chelsea at Wembley in the cup semis three days later. Twelve months on, he made a lot of changes after a last-eight European battle with Atletico Madrid that went to extra time on the Wednesday, then lost 3-2 to Liverpool at this same stage of the FA Cup less than 72 hours later.
Last season, the FA Cup draw handed them a Wembley date with Sheffield United, then a Championship side, and a six-change line-up from their midweek quarter-final decider against Bayern Munich had enough to put them into the final. They got a bit of luck there, and went on to win the treble.
They had their luck on Saturday, too; Chelsea had enough chances to win the tie, but their ongoing battles with the expected goals metric meant they let City off the hook. That is where their perseverance came in, with Bernardo, fresh from that terrible shootout penalty in the European champions’ midweek exit against Real Madrid, getting the goal on 84 minutes and pointing to the badge on his shirt afterwards to show what it means.
“You helped us win this game” 💬@BernardoCSilva’s message to the fans 🩵 pic.twitter.com/e7G4x3m1v6
— Manchester City (@ManCity) April 20, 2024
These matches normally come at the lowest ebb of a season in terms of City’s energy levels. Traditionally, they have qualified for the semi-finals of the Champions League in midweek but then do not have the legs to also reach the FA Cup final a few days later.
The added difficulty here was that on top of extra time and penalties in midweek, they also lost to Madrid, meaning the Chelsea match also came at the lowest point in terms of morale, too.
“People cannot understand the punch in our face to be out of the Champions League,” Guardiola says of that Madrid defeat.
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“I think what we showed today, after Wednesday, (is that) everybody is tired and exhausted,” Kevin De Bruyne added.
Bernardo had his say, too: “Today was too much. It’s too much. There’s no excuse for the game to not be tomorrow (played Sunday, when Manchester United met Coventry City in the other semi — both of whom hadn’t played since last Saturday). It’s not acceptable. For all of us as a team that’s how we feel.”
Guardiola had one message for his players beforehand: “Don’t fight against your feelings. You are sad. I am sad! The biggest mistake is to say you have to be happy, exceptional. They said, ‘I’m so down’, because we lost an exceptional game we played. We make a lot of good things today. The little details make the difference. I say, ‘You are sad? Play with this sadness. Give everything again’. And they did.”
The main thrust of Guardiola’s post-match interviews was his annoyance at the scheduling of this match.
“It is unacceptable, really unacceptable,” he railed, live on BBC TV. “Coventry, United and Chelsea don’t play in the week and let us play today.”
“It’s impossible,” he continued. “For the health of the players. It is not normal, it’s not normal. Because we won, I have the courage to tell you — if we lost, I would shut up. It’s not possible, it’s unacceptable.
"It's unacceptable to play today!" 😡
Pep Guardiola was NOT happy with his side playing just three days after their Champions League quarter-final fixture 📆 pic.twitter.com/dDaMDglGUu
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) April 20, 2024
“For me as a manager, tell me how you prepare for this semi-final against Chelsea in their best moment of the season (after thrashing Everton 6-0 in their previous game on Monday). How? It’s impossible. There is no chance.”
But he also made several points which bled over into the difficulty of losing to Madrid, and also his own approach to team selection. BBC pundit Alan Shearer asked him a fantastic Devil’s advocate question. You do not have to play the same players (as faced Madrid), though, you could make some changes, he suggested.
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Guardiola, indeed, had picked a very strong line-up, including De Bruyne, Rodri, Phil Foden, Bernardo — who City staff noticed was tired inside half an hour — as well as Kyle Walker, who only returned from a month out injured on Wednesday night.
“I thought a lot (about making changes) but I remember two or three years ago it happened the same, we played in Dortmund on Wednesday, we travelled here against Liverpool on Saturday, we made a lot of changes and it was 3-0 at half-time, they destroyed us, and after we saved face in the second half,” he said, conflating two seasons but still managing to make his point.
“So I thought a lot with the staff and the physios, most of them (the players) were not recovered, it’s impossible. Not just physicality, but the way we played, against Madrid, quarter-finals, extra-time, penalties, mentally it is so, so tough to recover.
“They are legends, these guys, what they have done these seven years. Rodri, the way he played today, and Kyle, the runs backwards after being injured three or four weeks. Honestly, I don’t understand how they survived.”
Bernardo celebrates his winner (Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images)
Guardiola, then, knew his team were exhausted, expected a disjointed performance but ploughed on anyway, believing the best way to move on was to pick his best players. Chelsea’s decision-making helped them, but given you would not expect City to repeat this performance again soon, the most important thing is they got the job done.
Emotions are clearly running high, with a lot of negativity seeping through, so they had to snap themselves out of their funk quickly. Imagine how differently they will feel in a month if, say, they beat Manchester United in the final to clinch a double and another open-top bus parade two days later.
There is no guarantee they will do that, of course, but they have the chance, the opportunity to think about what could be, rather than what could have been.
Had they gone out of two cups in four days, those feelings of ‘sadness’ would have festered a little longer. As it is, they could wake up on Sunday morning, look forward to two days off before Thursday’s away game against Brighton and then tackle the rest of the season.
City were not pretty yesterday by any means, and maybe there should be a limit to lionising mentality when the other team have missed several good chances, but they certainly did put up a fight after a tough couple of days.
Maybe that is just what it looks like when you embrace sadness.
(Top photo: CameraSport via Getty Images)
