When Manchester City faced Chelsea, Manuel Akanji started in place of John Stones, but he was not as effective as the England player.
Pep Guardiola is adamant that Manuel Akanji can provide a competitive substitute for John Stones in Manchester City’s hybrid midfield role.
In the match against Chelsea, Akanji was substituted for Stones, as the number five is still attempting to recover from ongoing injury issues. Tuesday was Stones’ first game at Copenhagen. Next Tuesday, City will host Brentford at the Etihad. As he has done several times this season, Akanji was asked to push into midfield, but he did not give his best effort against Chelsea.
Raheem Sterling gave the visitors the lead in the first half as they frequently took advantage of City’s counterattacking strengths. In a painful match that saw City lose the title after victories for Arsenal and Liverpool, Rodri pulled one back toward the finish.
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When asked about Akanji’s performance, which fell short of that of some of his colleagues, Guardiola maintained that the Swiss international can play center back like Stones can.
“He is capable. He gave a really strong performance here against Liverpool once,” the manager remarked, putting more emphasis on the cohesiveness of the team than any one player.
“Our dynamic was off in the first half. The ball was not brought into the areas where we were. Being a manager is not required to see the need for change following Raheem’s goal.
“As a manager, I had to be focused on the first half to be better and on Tuesday we have another chance to do it.”