Guardiola fully backs Man City players in furious referee row despite FA charge

05 December 2023 , 22:30

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Erling Haaland and Man City players surrounded referee Simon Hooper at full-time (Image: Kieran McManus/Tottenham Hotspur FC/REX/Shutterstock)

Pep Guardiola has backed his Manchester City players over their furious reaction to ref Simon Hooper's howler against Tottenham.

City have been hit with an FA charge of failing to control their players after angrily surrounding Hooper in added time of the 3-3 draw. After a foul on Erling Haaland, Hooper waved play on in the 94th minute, only to then blow his whistle with Jack Grealish clean through. That decision denied City the chance to score a winner, with Guardiola defending the furious and emotional reaction of his players.

“I would like to know how the reaction should be when that last action happened?” said Guardiola. “Maybe Jack wouldn’t have scored, who knows? But I would like to know from the Premier League or whoever, how should we react in that situation to win a tough game.

“How should the players not react? They want to fine us, we’ll be fined. It’s fine. I promise you, all of us, if you are a footballer and it happened, you would react in that way.

“Of course you have to respect the referees. Tell me one player or manager who doesn’t respect the referees. But it's emotions, it's feelings. I don’t understand how it should be different. I understand my players completely. The way we behaved in the last two games against top sides, we are there. We are there.”

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(David Blunsden/Action Plus/REX/Shutterstock)

Guardiola reiterated that his was happy with his side's performance in the draw with Tottenham as well as the previous game against Liverpool, a 1-1 draw, Those results, as well as the 4-4 draw with Chelsea before the international break, mean that City have failed to record a win in three consecutive matches for the first time since Guardiola took over as manager.

“We have to do much better,” said Guardiola. “Try not to concede [so many] goals. But my feeling today is we're going to win the Premier League. People don't believe it already, after three draws, but we feel we're going to do it again - knowing that it is not easy because no team has done it yet [won four in a row].

“The difficulty is there and was last season, but if you ask me today what I'm feeling, we're going to do it again. Except the Chelsea game, the rest of the games were similar [in terms of conceding goals], even lower than last season when we won the Treble.

“The reality is we have conceded a lot of goals and we have to get better. When you concede goals ine very game it is difficult to sustain. We don't have many chances conceded so hopefully we can continue with that because that is a good sign.”

David McDonnell