Premier League legend says club’s complaints premature and unwarranted
Roy Keane has criticised Pep Guardiola after the Manchester City manager suggested fatigue played a part in his side’s 1-1 draw with Arsenal on Sunday.
City played against Arsenal at the Emirates only 66 hours after facing Napoli in the Champions on League on Thursday, while their opponents had an extra two days of rest, having played Athletic Bilbao on Tuesday evening.
After a game where his side scored within the opening ten minutes and then mostly sat back to defend their lead, without success, Guardiola said: “They were better and we were incredibly tired. Sometimes people don’t realise, the game against Napoli in the Champions League was so emotional.
“After that a recovery day and the day after you have to [travel] four, five hours.
“If you want to bring up the fact that now I’m complaining for the schedule, OK. I’m complaining for the schedule!”
However, Keane felt Guardiola’s side had not done enough this early in the season to complain about the scheduling, and that they had the squad depth to deal with it.
“If you’re talking about fatigue and schedules, we’re in September and they’re on the back of two home matches,” said Keane.
“The United game they were fairly comfortable. Napoli had a man sent off after 20 minutes. They’ve not travelled from Russia or Poland when you’ve had a tough away game.
“We all know the challenges of being a footballer is being robust and playing two or three games a week.
“We look at their players on the bench – I’m sure there must be other managers in the Premier League looking at Pep thinking, ‘Pep, if you think you’ve got problems with schedules and the strength in depth…’
“My goodness, I didn’t like that angle Pep was coming from.”
City captain Bernardo Silva also expressed the same concerns as his manager, but he pointed out that City were not concerned about a tight fixture schedule so much as they were concerned that it was happening before a high-profile game.
“The reality is we cannot come in to one of the most important games in the season with such a disadvantage in terms of rest,” said Silva. “It is not fair to play one of these games like this. It is just not right.”
