Guardiola admits his players ‘couldn’t handle’ Bournemouth’s onslaught

Pep Guardiola blamed a lack of ‘intensity’ from his injury-hit side after Manchester City surrendered their place at the top of the Premier League with a shock 2-1 loss at Bournemouth.

Goals from Antoine Semenyo and Evanilson, before a late reply from Josko Gvardiol, inflicted City’s first top-flight defeat since December 6 and their second straight loss in all competitions after the Carabao Cup exit to Tottenham on Wednesday.

Having seen that 32-game unbeaten run go up in smoke, allowing Liverpool to go top with their 2-1 win over Brighton, Guardiola admitted his tired players ‘couldn’t handle’ the onslaught from Bournemouth.

He said: ‘We couldn’t match up to the intensity. All the situations with the long balls, we couldn’t win it.

‘In the game, for many reasons, they were higher than us. We have players with rhythm and the other players have a lack of rhythm because we could not train due to injuries. But we knew it.’

He added: ‘It is what it is (with the injuries). We have few players with a lot of minutes and a lot of players with no minutes to the balance is a bit uncomfortable. We played good against Spurs but today we could not handle their intensity that they had and that’s why we lost the game.’

Guardiola had been forced to include Kyle Walker on the back of only six minutes of training in the past three weeks because of the injury crisis. Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji had also been forced into the line-up despite pre-match doubts around their fitness.

With the Champions League tie against Ruben Amorim’s Sporting on Tuesday, Guardiola revealed Ruben Dias will not be fit for the trip to the Portugal and John Stones, who missed the defeat at Bournemouth, is also a doubt with a foot problem.

By winning, Bournemouth ended a streak of 14 straight league defeats to City, amassed at the startling aggregate of 45-7.

Andoni Iraola said: ‘I think it’s very difficult to beat City. You have to enjoy it at least today.

‘Tomorrow we will start thinking on Brentford. But apart from the result, I’m very, very proud of the performance. I think to beat them, I think deservedly, is even more difficult.

‘Even if we suffered until the end because they pushed us in the last minutes. We had to feel the pressure and it was tight at the end. You don’t enjoy that at all. There was so much pressure.

‘I’m very pleased, one thing is to beat City but another is to play better. We played with no fear, tried to press when we could and defend when we had to.’