Manchester City moved up to third place in the Premier League table and took a big step towards playing in the Champions League next season by beating Aston Villa 2-1
Pep Guardiola described his players as ‘unbelievable’ after Matheus Nunes struck a dramatic late winner to sink Aston Villa 2-1 at the Etihad on Tuesday night.
“The games against Everton and now Aston Villa were so tough and the players have behaved unbelievably,” declared Guardiola, who celebrated wildly when Nunes tucked in Jeremy Doku’s back-post cross in added time.
“Football is emotion. For the fans, players, we have a lot of pressure for the club to go to the Champions League. I’m really happy. Aston Villa is a team to the last man, one of the top teams in Europe. We played really good. We were aggressive in our duels, the back four was unbelievable.
“The action from Jeremy Doku… brilliant. He can create something with his pace. The team fought a lot. The performance was really good. It is a fantastic team. The season has been bad. It doesn’t matter about the final or if we finish in Champions League.
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“What makes you feel good is the Premier League. It happened and sometimes you have bad seasons. Liverpool will be champions and the level of teams is outstanding.”
Manchester City now sit in third place in the table and are four points clear of sixth-placed Chelsea and Villa, who are in seventh.
Villa had cancelled out a Bernardo Silva opener with a Marcus Rashford penalty and the contest looked to be heading for a draw until Nunes’ late intervention. It was Nunes’ first goal in the Premier League for City and he smiled: “It was perfect timing. It could not have come at a better time.
“It was very important. It was a very tough game against a very tough opponent and we came with the mentality that we need to win it – and that is what we did. We are going to see at the end of the season how big this win is going to be.”
Unai Emery now faces the prospect of not qualifying for next season’s Champions League, having reached the last eight this season. But as Emery looked ahead to Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final against Crystal Palace at Wembley, he was not too despondent, saying: “Overall, I am proud of what we are doing.
“I was pushing the players to try and win this match and we got close to the level we wanted but we lost. Now, we focus on the match in London against Crystal Palace.”
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