Guardiola says Man City star is ‘step by step’ getting back to his best – and hails ‘huge victory’ over Leeds | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola says Rodri is getting back to his best “step by step” after helping Manchester City to a 1-0 win over Everton.

Antoine Semenyo scored the only goal of the game as City closed the gap to Arsenal at the top to two points ahead of their rivals’ clash with Chelsea on Sunday.

“Rodri, what a player,” Guardiola said after the game.

“We missed him for a long, long time and now step by step he’s coming back to his best.”

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City were without Erling Haaland for the clash due to injury and Guardiola praised his players for the way they performed without their talisman.

“It was,” he said when asked if it was difficult to win without the striker. “Erling is a massively important player for us.

“If you ask me about the game, we didn’t start well. Leeds are always so intense.

“After that we did what we are good at for the last decade we are together. A thousand million passes, make the vibe of the crowd a little bit more calm and let them run and run.

“But we missed a bit of intention up front to make more movements but when they had more fatigue in the last 15 or 20 minutes (of the first half), we start to pass the ball to try to score a goal. We got it at the end of the first half.

“In the second half we always drop but it didn’t happen today. We were incredibly focused in all departments.

“We defended really well and it was a huge victory for us.”

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