Pep Guardiola heaps praise on ‘exceptional’ Rayan Cherki after Man City win | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola called Rayan Cherki an “exceptional player” after the Frenchman’s first-half strike inspired Manchester City to a 2-0 Carabao Cup quarter-final win over Brentford.

Cherki has endured an injury-impacted start to life at City since his £30million summer move from Lyon, but the 22-year-old has impressed in recent weeks, with four assists in his last four Premier League appearances and now a superb goal for his fourth of the campaign.

When Brentford failed to properly clear Divine Mukasa’s corner, the ball came to Cherki on the edge of the box and he quickly side-stepped Mikkel Damsgaard before unleashing a powerful shot into the top corner.

“Close to the 18-yard box of the opponent he is an exceptional player,” Guardiola said.

“It was a fantastic goal, a blind guy, a blind woman can realise, it is not necessary to be a journalist or a manager to realise he is a fantastic, fantastic player.

“I saw it many times with Phil (Foden) this type of goal, with Kevin (De Bruyne) before, so I am happy that it opened the game.”

With seven changes from Sunday’s 3-0 win at Crystal Palace, City were far from their best and might have gone down to 10 men 16 minutes in when Abdukodir Khusanov fouled Kevin Schade as he prepared to shoot from the edge of the box.

Having survived that, they bossed the rest of the first half and Savinho’s heavily-deflected strike made sure of the win.

The Brazilian’s shot might not have troubled Hakon Valdimarsson until it struck the retreating Kristoffer Ajer to loop over the goalkeeper, but Guardiola praised Savinho’s mentality after he has been on the receiving end of criticism.

“What I like is that he is always going all the time,” Guardiola said. “The final decision can be better but always as a reward of his work ethic and he goes and he goes all the time.”

Brentford boss Keith Andrews was clear in his view that Khusanov should have walked, reshaping the entire game.

“I’m very quick to defend officials generally, it’s such a difficult job, but that was one they didn’t get right,” he said.

“The explanation was that the touch being too far away from goal doesn’t quite sit well with me after watching it back because he’s clean through on goal…

“If it’s a red card it’s a big advantage for us obviously, but we’ll never know.”

Despite that moment, Andrews was pleased with his side’s display.

“We showed a lot of courage, a lot of conviction and bravery in how we played and we had to,” he added. “We were missing some players from the front line, we had one day’s prep after Leeds where we changed the system, how we built, how we pressed.

“It’s testament to the players, how intelligent they are, how adaptable they are and how versatile they are…I felt there were moments where we could have punished City, we just didn’t quite take the extra pass, but we restricted them to very little.”

Brentford were staying in Manchester after the game and were due to train at City’s facility on Thursday.

Asked if he agreed with Andrews on Khusanov decision, Guardiola said: “Tomorrow at the training ground, I’ll invite him to the cafe and we will discuss it.”