Man City star reckons Pep Guardiola’s facet will emerge a ‘stronger facet’
Manchester City star Manuel Akanji believes the defending Premier League champions will eventually come out their disastrous slump in form ‘a better side’
Manuel Akanji has backed Manchester City to come out of their current crisis as a stronger team.
Pep Guardiola’s champions find themselves in a remarkable rut which has left the English game stunned. City have won just one of their last 13 matches in all competitions, and seen their title defence left in tatters. Their most recent result was a 1-1 draw with Everton on Boxing Day in a match that saw goal machine forward Erling Haaland have a second half penalty saved by Jordan Pickford.
The slump has seen them drop to seventh place in the table, 14 points behind leaders Liverpool, who have a game in hand. While Guardiola’s men also face a desperate battle to make the knockout stages of the Champions League. It all adds up to an embarrassing mess for City, who travel to face Premier League strugglers Leicester City this weekend at the King Power Stadium.
Akanji admits he is at a loss to explain the shocking drop in form, but believes City will find a way to bounce back sooner rather than later. The defender, who reckons there is still no need to panic, said: “It happens, but in a bad run like this it’s hard to explain.
“Things like this can’t happen. We need to keep on working and the next opportunity is in a few days. We need to keep on working. There’s nothing else we can do at the moment. What do you expect us to do? Change system? Play other players? We’re trying everything, but it just isn’t going our way.
“We’ve had lots of injuries, so it’s not easy at the moment. But even now we will find a way and come out of this – and luck will come again on our side. Sometimes you have a bad run and things don’t go your way, so it’s good to look at things that aren’t working out that well right now.
“But you shouldn’t be at the point where you’re changing everything, because not everything was good before and not everything is bad now. I still believe that we will come back to the way we used to play – it will come sooner or later.”
Guardiola will be hoping to welcome back some big names from illness and niggling injuries when his side travel to the Midlands. But Akanji admits being without some key players is even harder to take at a time like this, considering some of his friends who play in European leagues are able to sit back and enjoy a winter break.
He added: “It’s really difficult, because everybody wants to stay fit. Nobody wants to be injured. The most important thing is that players that are healthy need to stay healthy.
“But it’s not always that easy when you play so many matches a year, and you don’t really have time to recover. I have friends of mine who are on holidays now, recovering for the second part of the season. We don’t have that.
“We need to try to find a way that these players playing now stay healthy, so that we can get the other guys back and rotate a bit more, and rest those that needs to rest.”
