Pep Guardiola insisted repeatedly that “Everything is fine” as Manchester City left St James’ Park reeling after a late, disputed defeat. The manager said the phrase four times in less than five minutes during a press conference that followed a match littered with contentious moments.<\/p>\n
City had seen a strong first-half penalty appeal turned down and fell behind shortly after the hour when Harvey Barnes fired a crisp opener. R\u00faben Dias produced a scruffy equaliser five minutes later, only for Barnes to claim what proved to be the winning goal on 70 minutes in circumstances City described as highly controversial.<\/p>\n
A lengthy VAR check concluded that both the goalscorer and Bruno Guimar\u00e3es were onside. City\u2019s complaints focused on contact with goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, who appeared to be bumped to the floor by Barnes in the phase before his backheel.<\/p>\n
Guardiola went onto the pitch at the final whistle and confronted match official Sam Barrott, a dispute reported to have continued into the referees dressing room. He dismissed the incident during the press conference, saying: “No, nothing, nothing. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. It is what it is.”<\/p>\n
Cameras captured Guardiola in conversation with Newcastle skipper Bruno Guimar\u00e3es. “I told him how good he is,” Guardiola said, before turning back to the game\u2019s contentious moments: “and the situation with Gigio [Donnarumma] I told him what happened for the previous situations. I think it\u2019s fine.”<\/p>\n
The manager also had an on-pitch exchange with a camera operator, who had one of his headphones lifted up by the City boss as the edges began to fray. When asked about a foul on Donnarumma, Guardiola replied: “If he complained, it\u2019s because something wrong happened. The same happened in Bournemouth . It\u2019s what it is.”<\/p>\n
Guardiola\u2019s impatience grew as questions continued. “The last five questions [have been] about referees and the actions,” he fumed. “Ask the referees. I didn\u2019t see the images yet and nothing is going to change. … I\u2019m not coming here to talk about referees, it\u2019s gone. I didn\u2019t come here to blame. It\u2019s fine. It didn\u2019t happen against Bournemouth so it\u2019s normal it didn\u2019t happen today.”<\/p>\n
R\u00faben Dias also voiced his frustration on Sky Sports: “Of all the decisions, only the second goal we need to make it make sense,” Dias fumed to Sky Sports. “Where\u2019s the sense in their player pushing our keeper out of the goal. What are we allowing and for how long? It\u2019s more like sometimes you allow it and sometimes you don\u2019t so what can you do? In the second goal Gigi [Donnarumma] is being pushed outside his area and there is no consequence.<\/p>\n
“I have had a chance to see, I didn\u2019t even see it out of the pitch. I had the chance to see the review and I think it is Barnes is pushing him away from the goal. We are so picky with certain contacts but then ones like this with the keeper, then they allow it. If this is the rule then fine. ]”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola insisted ‘Everything is fine’ as City protested a contentious 70th-minute winner and VAR…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,194,172],"tags":[1215],"class_list":["post-4650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-newcastle-united","category-epl","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650","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=4650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}