By Simon Leyland
David Moyes was interviewed by Sky Sports after the game last night and wasn’t unduly disappointed with the expected result at Manchester City.
The first goal from an Ake free kick was very unfortunate as it may have come about as the result of a push on Oggy but in the end goals from Haaland and Foden were enough to send City top and leave us in trouble.
Moyes can consider himself unlucky that he was without Declan, Tomas and Nayef who were allegedly struck down by illness but it would be a surprise if they weren’t available for Sunday!
Moyes was particularly frustrated by that as City’s way is usually to open you up through the middle whilst on this occasion they were able to score the simplest of goals to set themselves on their way.
But fair play to the team who gave their all but having left themselves a mountain to climb were unable to get back into it.
Speaking afterwards the manager said: “I thought we done a good job in the way we set up to try and play and make it difficult for them.
“But to concede a goal from a set piece against Man City, it was difficult. But we didn’t have some of the boys who might’ve helped us in those situations.
“That was the gut-wrenching thing because they can open you up and score good goals against you. But I thought in the main we defended well.
“Organisation (was at the heart of it), the players giving everything they can to try and do more than one job. They force you into doing two or three different jobs. And try and do it as well as we could.
“A little bit of good fortune you need at times as well, one hits the inside of the post. You need a little bit of that when you come to Man City. And I thought we deserved it, I thought we did really well in the first half.
“I don’t think (the goals) were anything to do with the last month… Man City have had a testing period as well.
“I still hope we would defend it (the first goal), I’ve told the players that as well. I won’t accept them getting away with it. But they’ve (the players) had an incredible period (of games) and we’ve still got more to come.
“He (Vladimir Coufal) felt his hamstring so we need to check it out in the morning and see how he is, hopefully it won’t be too bad.
“There were a lot of things we didn’t enjoy. We don’t enjoy them having all the possession. But if they’re going to have the possession then we need to make sure we do a good job. And we did a good job defensive wise… we didn’t keep the ball well enough and turned it over when we had the chance to get it and do some things with it.
“But you know we give the ball away for the second goal terribly on the halfway line, which frees up Haaland to get a run through. Prior to that we’d kept him really, really quiet in the game. That was disappointing and the third goal is a deflected shot from the edge of the box.
“In the end I don’t know if the scoreline is actually fair on us. It certainly is if you’re talking about possession because Man City are so good at it and they caused us lots of problems with how well they kept the ball.”
An interesting Moyesian fact: In 73 games he has never beaten a top 6 side away from home.