Pep Guardiola’s classy Newcastle United verdict after six-goal thriller vs Manchester City

Pep Guardiola was keen to credit Newcastle United for their performance after claiming a point against his Manchester City side.

The two teams played out an early game of the season contender in a six-goal thriller at St James’ Park.

Ilkay Gundogan opened the scoring for City just five minutes in, however, the Magpies shocked their visitors by flying into a 3-1 lead following goals from Miguel Almiron, Callum Wilson and Kieran Trippier.

The Premier League champions then hit back with two goals in five minutes through Erling Haaland and Bernando Silva before United regrouped and saw out an impressive point.

Rather than reflect on what went wrong his own side, Guardiola praised Eddie Howe’s side and set aside special praise for Allan Saint-Maximin.

Pep Guardiola full of praise for Newcastle United

Guardiola said: “He is one of the top managers. He took over the team in difficult circumstances. They made an incredible effort. They have everything, pace, quality. It’s a difficult place to come and we behaved really good again.

“The only problem is that it’s difficult to know but when we break the lines and we can run, the tendency is to finish the action. If you finish the action it’s not a problem, if you don’t finish then you don’t arrive to control Saint-Maximin and (Miguel) Almiron, and after they run and it’s a problem.

“We should spend more time in the final third, give more passes in that moment but it’s difficult because Erling’s going, Phil (Foden) has this aggression to go, if Jack (Grealish) or Riyad (Mahrez) or Bernardo (Silva) play right they have more calm and help us to be calm together and when they lose the ball we are there and they cannot run.

“In the first half, the problem was when we lost control it was like this, so one action we can run lose the ball, the back four is still so far away.

“Saint-Maximin can take it, turn and run, you have to defend with Ederson, you have no other option.

“This was the problem we had today in the game but sometimes it happens, not because we played bad because we had lots of chances one-on-one with the keeper.

“Also why not credit to Newcastle? Brentford beat United 4-0 and everyone talks about how bad United are but Brentford did something good no?

“When you take these players, this quality, it’s good and we need to live this experience - 2-1 down lets see what happens now.

“The Premier League is so difficult, everyone is going to drop points, we dropped our first two but considering how we behaved 3-1 down, the chances we create after 3-3, they defend deep with the weapon of Saint-Maximin.