Manchester Metropolis boss Pep Guardiola felt an enormous sense of “pleasure” after his aspect suffered their newest defeat by the hands of Aston Villa.

Villa opened the scoring after 16 minutes when Youri Tielemans’ elegant cross set Morgan Rogers on his approach who squared for Jhon Duran to attain his third in three matches.

Rogers netted his fifth objective of the season halfway via the second half to place Villa two targets forward and Metropolis’s response got here too late after Phil Foden took benefit of Lucas Digne’s slip to complete issues off with not sufficient time left to push for an equaliser.

Guardiola refused to level the finger at his gamers following the 2-1 loss – their sixth defeat of their final eight video games.

He mentioned: “Because of some gamers as we speak, the pleasure they confirmed on the pitch once more.

“It occurs since three months in the past, nothing has modified. I’ve to take care of that. This isn’t a straightforward place to come back, final season within the Premier League we didn’t win right here.

“I take the optimistic issues from right here, mirror and the identical with the gamers. What I see them doing earlier than and after, how they behave and I really feel pleasure, considering let’s go, onto the subsequent one.

“It’s over, that is one, we’ll get well, see what number of gamers can play the subsequent recreation towards Everton and attempt to do it.

“I by no means level in 9 years and by no means will level at gamers, it will likely be simple for me to say that and fully flawed as a result of they play, once I mentioned drop within the second half, we dropped as a staff. We weren’t like the primary half.

“Not for any explicit participant. I’ll by no means say this, they tried, they usually wish to do it and should discover a resolution and steadiness to create extra probabilities and rating targets and never concede.”

Erling Haaland was vastly pissed off all through the competition as soon as once more and has now scored only one in his final six league video games however Guardiola caught up for his talisman.

He added: “With out him (Haaland) we might be even worse.

“However I like how the gamers really feel this manner. That is our solely probability we have now to get higher.

“We tried and on the finish he must be delivered the suitable balls in the suitable spots and place however now we’ll struggle for the subsequent one.”

Unai Emery insists he sensed a drop in confidence from Metropolis which allowed them to assert a 3rd win in 4.

He mentioned: “Progressively, the mentality and confidence was growing and theirs was happening, and it was improbable how the gamers responded on the sector.

“The primary half we didn’t work fully as a result of we have been defending so low. Within the second half we have been getting extra within the attacking third and the results we scored and the boldness elevated extra. Defensively we did a improbable working 90 minutes.

“Manchester Metropolis are a bit of bit below the boldness they’d usually.

“The second half was completely different, we dominated and we scored. By these circumstances they have been feeling worse than even within the first half.”