Guardiola pleased with City's mentality in Arsenal draw | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola says he’s happy with his side’s determination in Sunday’s Premier League draw at Arsenal.

City led for 84 minutes in north London after Erling Haaland’s spectacular breakaway goal less than 10 minutes after kick-off.

However, Arsenal substitute Gabriel Martinelli grabbed an equaliser three minutes into second-half stoppage time after a backs-to-the-wall defensive display from the Blues.

After victories over Manchester United and Napoli in the last seven days, Guardiola made it clear how tough his players had to be to get a result against one of the best sides in the Premier League in recent years.

“We cannot make analysis without talking about what happened this week,” he began.

“We played tough games against United and Napoli. Hats off to the team and the resilience.

“When you are not effective in the pressing, always it is difficult. I think the result is fair.

“We made some transitions but I think Arsenal was better. It’s a better result than last season and better against United last week, so we will take that.

“They were better and we were tired. We played an emotional game against Napoli and then we had four or five hours to arrive to London.

“It was so tough but we were there. We had to be so strong in terms of mentality and we have done it.

“We have a lot of fatigue, how many injuries with John, Cherki, Ait-Nouri, Nathan was out and then Khusanov got injured.”

City had just 33% of possession, often surrendering the ball to our hosts and sitting deep in a tactic we have previously seen many sides do against us.

It almost proved a masterstroke, with City just a few minutes away from taking all three points.

Guardiola says his tactics reflected City’s best opportunity to win on the day.

“We try not to be like this but when the opponent is better and we have Erling who can run with such power, we have to do this,” he said.

“Remember how many counter attacks we scored with Leroy [Sane], Raheem [Sterling] and Kevin [De Bruyne]? I would prefer not to do it but I would expect in this level we have to do it.”