Cleverley on Guardiola and City cup win against watford
24/09/2024
Etihad Stadium, Manchester, UK
24/09/2024
Etihad Stadium, Manchester, UK
Category
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SportsTranscript
00:00So, Tom, could you just explain your 18 games, I think, into a managerial career?
00:19Can you explain what it's like standing on the touchline, trying to take on Pep Guardiola?
00:25Do you know what, in the 90-minute period you're sort of so engulfed in what's happening in the game,
00:33that I just look after what's happening with my team.
00:37But if you strip it back and reflect on this time last year I was managing Watford under-18s,
00:42away at Fleetwood under-18s, then it's a long way I've come in a short space of time.
00:48I think every young coach is inspired by Pep and how he's transformed football in this country
00:54and how dominant his team have been.
00:57It's an honour for me to be on the touchline next to him.
01:03Tom, we've had a terrible record of early starts and we definitely didn't want one tonight.
01:09What were your thoughts in four minutes, because that's five in a row now?
01:13As a coach, there's not much you can do about giving the ball away in such an easy circumstance.
01:22You fear the worst after that, but it's not something I want to focus on this evening.
01:28The objective was to be more resilient after the weekend.
01:32I thought it was too easy for us to be broken down at Norwich and the players needed to respond to that.
01:39We showed backbone, although not in the first five minutes.
01:42I thought we showed real resilience and to value the art of defending today.
01:47We can take belief that we pushed the best team in the world all the way.
01:54Thoughts on the dismount goal?
01:56For me, it's a perfectly good goal.
01:58The dynamic is you've got a strong, explosive player against a young lad.
02:04It can maybe look over-aggressive, but it's shoulder-to-shoulder.
02:09It's disappointing, but after the controversy at the weekend, you don't expect to get those ones.
02:17Would you expect it to be given the other end?
02:20No comment on that one.
02:22All I can say is I think a perfectly good goal has been disallowed.
02:26Disappointed for Cuadro.
02:28It's obviously a big stage for him to score such a decent goal.
02:32I've watched it back a couple of times and it's disappointing.
02:38After Saturday, did you learn a bit of some of your players' character tonight?
02:43Yes, definitely.
02:44I've made nine changes and it showed that everyone's ready to step up.
02:48It's been a very settled league starting XI at the minute,
02:53but the last two performances maybe have been a little under par.
02:56Those players that want to show the best version of themselves tonight certainly did that
03:02and gave me some good problems for the weekend.
03:05When you said yesterday this was probably the sort of game that we needed,
03:09there were some raised eyebrows amongst the fans,
03:11but I think we saw what you meant tonight.
03:13Yes, you've got no option but to be structured and disciplined and hard-working
03:18and value defending your goal when you come here.
03:22Those are all things we needed to see in our performance tonight.
03:26Please, like I said, the word we've been using has been resilience.
03:31We showed that we were disciplined, we made it hard for them
03:35and then when they did break through us and show their quality,
03:38we put our bodies on the line, so I'm proud of the players.
03:41Does that re-instill some belief as well?
03:43Definitely, yes.
03:45Belief, but as well the basic art of defending will be important at every level.
03:54We just didn't value it enough against Coventry and Norwich
03:58and you can see with the amount of big chances we conceded in those games.