Pep Guardiola's Reaction to Manchester City's Defeat to Spurs

Tottenham shocked Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium with a superb 2–0 victory. Brennan Johnson broke the deadlock in the 35th minute after a VAR review overturned an offside call, converting a low cross from Richarlison. Early in added time, João Palhinha—on his full Premier League debut—pounced on a costly error from City goalkeeper James Trafford, hammering in the rebound to seal the win.

Guardiola Reaction

“I had a feeling it was a little bit better than the result,” Guardiola told TNT Sports. “We start well. We concede a goal that could happen. The simple things, we miss the simple things with the ball. We lost with the quality we have, individually the simple things with the ball we miss it. That is why in transitions and of course they score the second at the end of the first half it was difficult. We need one goal and we had chances and the penalty is not given on Oscar [Bobb] and after the chance for Erling [Haaland] and Rayan [Cherki]. We had chances but we didn’t react well with the marking and the pressing. We knew it. Because Thomas [Frank] does it and it happens. We have to attract and play in different way to the way we play. The final third is really good. We control the transitions. The result is not good. It is a long, long way and we will learn from that.”

On losing control of the match

“It happens sometimes against Spurs. They punish us always in that position in one action. But even with that, before the goal and after the goal, we slept and many times the simple things, passes we didn’t break. We didn’t make our build up because they were so narrow. We put the ball more outside and from there try to make the action. Many teams play high pressing and we have to read for that.”

On new signings

“We will see. We have one week with the club. We talk with the players, agents. We will see.”

🚨‼️ Pep Guardiola has lost 10 times in total against Tottenham. It's the joint most amount of defeats he has against any other side, level with Liverpool. (BBC) pic.twitter.com/Dlxhgg5ScN

— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom) August 23, 2025

On his team making mistakes

“When we talk about the second goal, obviously. We talk about that against high-pressing you have to attack differently in our build up. After we dropped we were quite good. I know the physicality they have. We were close in the transition. But we lose the simple things, a lot of ball we lost,” Guardiola told the BBC.

On team chemistry

“We have done many good things in this period but we have to shape and the finish of the transfer market. We will see how many players we have and after that we will see.”