Manchester City head coach Pep Guardiola has joined his protege Mikel Arteta by stating his unhappiness with the ball following their FA Cup win over Plymouth Argyle. The Premier League side battled back from a goal down to win 3-1 at the Etihad Stadium and end the visitors’ run in the competition, having knocked out Liverpool in the previous round. Plymouth took the lead through Maksym Talovierov’s header before a double from Nico O’Reilly and Kevin De Bruyne’s late strike won it for the hosts. But Guardiola wasn’t overly happy with how his side were prevented from finding the net – bizarrely blaming the ball’s trajectory for their missed chances.
City had 20 attempts on goal and hit the target with nine of them, which doesn’t include Ilkay Gundogan’s effort that bounced back off the woodwork. Erling Haaland was guilty of blazing over from six yards out while others missed simple chances. Instead of blaming their profligacy on poor finishing, Guardiola felt a different force was working against his team: the ball. “I don’t know how many chances or shots we had that maybe were not on target due to the ball,” Guardiola said in his post-match news conference.
“The ball is difficult to bring it where you want because sometimes, this ball does whatever the ball wants. But really, really pleased with the performance and to be again, for many years, be in the quarter-finals.”
It comes in the wake of Arteta’s comments following Arsenal’s Carabao Cup semi-final first-leg defeat to Newcastle. The Spaniard watched his Arsenal side bow out 4-0 on aggregate of the Carabao Cup semi-final in February at the hands of Newcastle, despite having 23 shots with a xG of 3.09 in the first leg.
The Gunners only managed to direct three of their shots on target, with Gabriel Martinelli striking the post in the first half and Kai Havertz missing their best opportunity in the second period when he sent a free header awkwardly wide from close range.
A number of other chances flew over the crossbar and Arteta referred to the differences between the ball used in the competition compared to the Nike ball used in the Premier League.
Asked what he could do to help his players improve their finishing, he said: “Nothing, just try and show them and give them tips of what we can do better.
“I think we kicked a lot of the balls over the bar and it’s tricky that this ball flies a lot. We discussed that as well, so there are details that we can do better.
Explaining further about the ball, he added: “It’s just different, it’s just very different to the Premier League ball, and you have to adapt to that because it flies different. When you touch it, the grip is very different as well, so you have to adapt to that.”
