Pep Guardiola pushed back sharply at Wayne Rooney after the former striker questioned the tone of Manchester City’s celebrations following their win over Arsenal. The victory prompted exuberant scenes at the Etihad: Erling Haaland emerged from the pitch topless with his man bun visible and sang to a camera, while goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma leapt into the stands.<\/p>\n
Rooney, a five-time Premier League champion with Manchester United and appearing as a pundit on BBC’s Match of the Day, called the scenes \u201ca bit over the top.\u201d He added: \u201cIt\u2019s six games to go for City,\u201d he argued, \u201cit\u2019s obviously a big win. I just think it\u2019s a little bit premature and it might come back to bite them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rooney also rated Arsenal marginally higher as the run-in continued. \u201cIt is obviously going to be tight but City have got one more game to try to win, so I still have Arsenal down as slight favorites,\u201d he said. On the pressure of a title chase, Rooney warned: \u201cI\u2019ve been in this situation myself, where you need to win all your games for the title. You look at your games and you think well we should win this one, or that one, but it never pans out that way. From now until the end of the season it is just going to be down to which team keeps their composure the best\u2014that\u2019s who will win it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola responded with evident irritation, rejecting the notion that his players had been disrespectful or complacent. \u201cWhen they celebrated, people can say whatever\u2014stupid things they want to say\u2014they celebrated because they know the value of the opponent,\u201d he said. \u201cThey [City \u2019s players] knew if we didn\u2019t win it would be \u2018bye bye.\u2019 They won and still we are there. How can they not celebrate it? As much as you respect the opponent and the fans of the opponent, celebrate however you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cWait until the end of the season to celebrate? Come on,\u201d Guardiola added, an obvious sense of exasperation now in his voice. \u201cI said to them, \u2018Every single game go to our fans and enjoy the moment.\u2019 What sense is there not to live it? You have to celebrate just once if you win? And if you don\u2019t win you cry all the time? Come on.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody knew that game. It was a final. Especially for us. Maybe not for them but for us it was a final and of course you have to celebrate it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola dismisses Rooney as ‘stupid’, defends city’s celebrations after the Etihad victory today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,238],"tags":[1600],"class_list":["post-12613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-manchester-city","tag-rooney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}