Kevin De Bruyne did not care that Manchester City failed to hit top form as they still managed to beat Swansea City 2-1 on Saturday.
City got their Premier League title bid back on track at the expense of managerless Swansea, but they left it late before winning 2-1 in a frantic finish.
The battling Swans looked to have claimed a deserved point as Bafetimbi Gomis smashed a last-minute equaliser past the outstanding Joe Hart at the Etihad Stadium.
But City snatched three points in injury time as a Yaya Toure strike looped over Lukasz Fabianski via a fortunate deflection off Kelechi Iheanacho, who was credited with the goal.
City were far from their best, perhaps still weary after Tuesday’s exhilarating Champions League win over Borussia Monchengladbach, but De Bruyne was not concerned about that.
The Belgian, who appeared only as a second-half substitute, said: “It doesn’t matter. We won – that’s it.
“Obviously you also need to win your hard games, but afterwards nobody will speak about it. It wasn’t the best performance but now nobody cares, to be honest.
“To concede in the 90th minute, it’s obviously difficult but luckily for us we scored the goal and that is the most important thing. Obviously it’s an important three points for us.”
City looked sluggish throughout but led from the 26th minute after Swansea failed to pick up Wilfried Bony at a corner and the Ivorian headed in against his former club.
Swansea were the better team in the second half and might have had an equaliser much sooner than they did were it not for the brilliance of Hart in the home goal.
Gylfi Sigurdsson caused them regular problems and tested Hart on a number of occasions as well as having a goal disallowed for a foul by Gomis.
As well as looking weary, City were again without injured key pair Vincent Kompany and Sergio Aguero and De Bruyne hopes the longer gap before facing Arsenal a week on Monday will prove beneficial.
The 24-year-old said: “I think we have played a lot of games until now but now we have a good stretch to recover a little bit for the busy (Christmas) period. I think this can be an important week for us, mentally and physically, for us to come back, for the energy and everything to come back a little bit.
“It is important (to rest a bit) because you are busy all the time. If you have a day off you can refresh mentally.
“It is also important to go home, see the family, see all the other things you are not able to do when you are busy all the time. I think it is going to be good.”
No comments:
Post a Comment