Cleverley on Guardiola and City cup win against watford

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Cleverley on Guardiola and City cup win against watford  24/09/2024  Etihad Stadium, Manchester, UK

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00:00So, Tom, could you just explain your 18 games, I think, into a managerial career?

00:19Can you explain what it's like standing on the touchline, trying to take on Pep Guardiola?

00:25Do you know what, in the 90-minute period you're sort of so engulfed in what's happening in the game,

00:33that I just look after what's happening with my team.

00:37But if you strip it back and reflect on this time last year I was managing Watford under-18s,

00:42away at Fleetwood under-18s, then it's a long way I've come in a short space of time.

00:48I think every young coach is inspired by Pep and how he's transformed football in this country

00:54and how dominant his team have been.

00:57It's an honour for me to be on the touchline next to him.

01:03Tom, we've had a terrible record of early starts and we definitely didn't want one tonight.

01:09What were your thoughts in four minutes, because that's five in a row now?

01:13As a coach, there's not much you can do about giving the ball away in such an easy circumstance.

01:22You fear the worst after that, but it's not something I want to focus on this evening.

01:28The objective was to be more resilient after the weekend.

01:32I thought it was too easy for us to be broken down at Norwich and the players needed to respond to that.

01:39We showed backbone, although not in the first five minutes.

01:42I thought we showed real resilience and to value the art of defending today.

01:47We can take belief that we pushed the best team in the world all the way.

01:54Thoughts on the dismount goal?

01:56For me, it's a perfectly good goal.

01:58The dynamic is you've got a strong, explosive player against a young lad.

02:04It can maybe look over-aggressive, but it's shoulder-to-shoulder.

02:09It's disappointing, but after the controversy at the weekend, you don't expect to get those ones.

02:17Would you expect it to be given the other end?

02:20No comment on that one.

02:22All I can say is I think a perfectly good goal has been disallowed.

02:26Disappointed for Cuadro.

02:28It's obviously a big stage for him to score such a decent goal.

02:32I've watched it back a couple of times and it's disappointing.

02:38After Saturday, did you learn a bit of some of your players' character tonight?

02:43Yes, definitely.

02:44I've made nine changes and it showed that everyone's ready to step up.

02:48It's been a very settled league starting XI at the minute,

02:53but the last two performances maybe have been a little under par.

02:56Those players that want to show the best version of themselves tonight certainly did that

03:02and gave me some good problems for the weekend.

03:05When you said yesterday this was probably the sort of game that we needed,

03:09there were some raised eyebrows amongst the fans,

03:11but I think we saw what you meant tonight.

03:13Yes, you've got no option but to be structured and disciplined and hard-working

03:18and value defending your goal when you come here.

03:22Those are all things we needed to see in our performance tonight.

03:26Please, like I said, the word we've been using has been resilience.

03:31We showed that we were disciplined, we made it hard for them

03:35and then when they did break through us and show their quality,

03:38we put our bodies on the line, so I'm proud of the players.

03:41Does that re-instill some belief as well?

03:43Definitely, yes.

03:45Belief, but as well the basic art of defending will be important at every level.

03:54We just didn't value it enough against Coventry and Norwich

03:58and you can see with the amount of big chances we conceded in those games.

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