Jeremy Doku could have had leg broken, rages Pep Guardiola at referee
Pep Guardiola claimed Jeremy Doku could have suffered a broken leg after the Manchester City manager slammed the decision to book his Belgium winger for diving.
Doku jumped over the onrushing Jan Paul van Hecke to avoid being cleaned out by the Brighton and Hove Albion defender on the hour mark.
Referee Simon Hooper responded by issuing Doku with a yellow card for diving to disbelief from the player and Guardiola on the touchline.
Guardiola confronted Hooper about the incident at the final whistle and suggested Doku could have suffered serious injury had he not jumped out of the way of Van Hecke’s challenge.
“If he doesn’t jump, he could break his leg,” the City manager said. “To go on the grass is a tackle and he jumps so there is no contact. Jeremy is not a diving player.
“They should know but it is what it is. We didn’t win or lose because of that decision. I said to the referee: ‘If he doesn’t jump he’d have been kicked hard.’
“He jumped to protect himself but it doesn’t matter, don’t ask me about that.”
The 2-2 draw left City a point behind fourth-placed Chelsea having played a game more. Fifth place looks like earning a Champions League spot this season with England currently top of the Uefa coefficients.
But Guardiola expects the race for Champions League qualification to go down to the final day. Brighton remain a point behind City.
“It looks like it. I don’t know. It’s nine games until the end of the season and of course we have tough games. We didn’t lose, if you can’t win try to be stable and the goal we conceded against [Nottingham] Forest [last week] was not good enough. But, yeah, it [the race for Champions League qualification] could be until the end. I think so.”
City lost Bernardo Silva to injury just 18 minutes after coming on as a second-half substitute with the Portugal midfielder set to be assessed next week.
Pressure getting to City as bold Brighton stay in Champions League race
The relief around all but a small enclave of the Etihad Stadium housing Brighton’s fans when Carlos Baleba ballooned a golden chance over the crossbar eight minutes from time was palpable.
In truth, it was one of several inviting openings Fabian Hurzeler’s upwardly mobile Brighton side failed to convert in a second half in which they kept cutting Manchester City open and the apprehension of the home supporters seemed to filter through to the players in sky blue who no longer possess the same assuredness of champions.
“Yeah definitely, everybody feels the pressure,” the City manager Pep Guardiola said when asked if he could sense a nervousness around the stadium in what is becoming an increasingly protracted battle for Champions League qualification that the Catalan believes will go down to the final day.
“It is what it is. We have to play better and after they will be back. In the good moments they are there but of course they feel if it’s no good. ‘Oh are we going to qualify?’ Everybody feels it. Everybody knows it.”
City did not play badly against a bold, brave Brighton who attack at pace and with precision and really are an increasingly impressive construct.
Guardiola’s team created more than they did in the 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest last weekend, punished two cheap turnovers by their opponents with goals and Omar Marmoush, the £59 million January signing from Eintracht Frankfurt, again underlined his attacking threat.
But there was little of the control they used to exert over opponents here and Hurzeler’s disappointment that his side did not claim a first victory at the Etihad, and with it a Premier League double over the champions, said it all. That aura of invincibility has been shredded and you can feel it among the restless home crowd.
City have now conceded 40 goals in the league, more than in any other campaign under Guardiola, and there are still more than two months of the season remaining. It would be more if Brighton had exhibited the same level of decisiveness in front of goal as they did in their slick build-up play.
They created three outstanding openings in the second half alone, slicing and dicing City only for the final flourish to elude them. The best of them arrived in the 82nd minute. Substitute Danny Welbeck showed strength and composure to run with the ball under pressure from deep in his own half after Brighton thwarted a City attack and prodded the ball to Kaoru Mitoma, who had the awareness to play a clever first-time pass into Joao Pedro ahead of him.
Pedro, a young centre-forward rightly earning a burgeoning reputation, ran the channel, drawing defenders and crossed. Ruben Dias missed it and the ball rolled through to Baleba. The Brighton midfielder, signed as Moises Caicedo’s replacement, had been brilliant in the game but presented with a chance to win it, he suffered a rush of blood to the head. He could have taken a touch and picked his spot – he certainly had the time – but instead elected to shoot first time and launched it high into the stands.
There is so much to like about this Brighton side, though. Players and managers come and go but they just keep on filling the gaps like it is the most natural thing in the world. It would certainly be intriguing to see them in the Champions League next season. Equally, it would be easy to imagine some of the Premier League and Europe’s bigger clubs trying to pick off some of their brightest talents this summer, from Pedro and Mitoma to Yankuba Minteh and Baleba. But even if they did you would back Brighton to bring in a fine cast of replacements.
Twice they came from behind to draw level and the frustration for Hurzeler was that the two goals they conceded were gifts really, Pedro losing possession for the first one and Georginio Rutter too easily in the lead-up to the second that Marmoush, with a thundering drive, punished mercilessly. City led when Erling Haaland scored from the penalty spot after Adam Webster felled Marmoush, cutting expertly inside.
Pervis Estupinan made it 1-1 when he curled a stunning free-kick in off the post and then another set-piece led to the second after City failed to deal with a corner. When the ball fell kindly to Jack Hinshelwood in the penalty area, he slightly miscued his shot but there was enough on it to take an awkward bounce off Abdukodir Khusanov and deflect in.
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