With a team full of starts such is Manchester City, and with a team full of expensive players like Manchester City, losing 2-0 to a last placed Premier League team without a single shot on target is embarrassing. Of course, any club on the planet will lose a game and it’s not uncommon, and one can argue that this defeat in a not so important League Cup match is the least damaging for the Citizens, but it’s the display in last night’s defeat which is worrying. Not only Pep Guardiola’s boys lost to a bottom placed Southampton, but they had no shots on target for 90 minutes. The Spaniard did leave ‘big guns’ like Bernardo Silva, Riyan Mahrez Kevin de Bruyne and Erling Haaland on the bench, but failed to score even when the Belgian and the Norwegian came in. And players like Foden, Grealish, Gundogan, Walker, Laporte and Philips should have been enough for the Saints. But they didn’t. And that is why Guardiola will not rest until Saturday.FT: Southampton 2-0 Manchester City.Pep Guardiola has lost a domestic cup quarter-final tie for the first time in his managerial career. 😫 pic.twitter.com/IpQheuxcgF— Squawka (@Squawka) January 11, 2023 The Citizens will meet United at Old Trafford this week and the Spaniard openly admitted that 6-3 win won’t happen again if his team plays badly as last night. “If we perform this way in the Manchester derby we do not have a chance. I have the feeling that the line-up doesn’t matter, the performance happens. We were not here. The best team won. They were better. We didn’t play well. We had a bad start and we didn’t perform good. We were not even close to what we are. We were not prepared to play in this competition to get to the semi-finals. We were not ready” said Guardiola after the game. 0 shots on target against relegation strugglers: City humiliated in SouthamptonAnd United will surely be hoping that the Citizens will feel the effect of the Southampton loss when they arrive at Old Trafford on Saturday. The Red Devils are ready for revenge after a 6-3 annihilation in the first derby of the season. They are also motivated by the fact that they can cut the deficit to only one point, if they beat Manchester City. The last time they did it was at the Etihad stadium in 2021, when Bruno Fernandes (penalty) and Luke Shaw provided a surprise 0-2 win.
