Pep Guardiola downplayed the flair of Rayan Cherki\u2019s rabona assist after Manchester City\u2019s 3-0 victory over Sunderland and urged the young midfielder to embrace simpler playmaking principles.<\/p>\n
The rabona set-up helped the Cityzens to a win that left the 11-time English champions two points behind league-leaders Arsenal, who were stunned in stoppage time by Aston Villa. \u201cI never saw Messi play a cross like he has done,\u201d the Spanish boss said. \u201cMessi is the best player to play the game but I never saw these kind of crosses.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrosses are fine, right or left or which part of your feet, it doesn\u2019t matter. If it is effective, it is fine, but I like the simplicity because I learned from Messi that I never make a mistake with the simple things.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe simple things he does perfectly, then he dribbles past four or five players. I want players to do the simple things well and after that you have special talent and he can do whatever he wants.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if he doesn\u2019t work now, it will be a problem. He will be in trouble,\u201d Guardiola finished<\/p>\n
Unlike his manager, Cherki left the Etihad smiling. The 22-year-old produced two assists, created the most chances (six) and completed the most dribbles (five) in the match. \u201cI worked for that [assist],\u201d Cherki told BBC after the match. \u201cI know my quality, which is my technique, when I play with Phil, Erling [Haaland], Omar [Marmoush], it\u2019s very important to give the good balls for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The France international, who left Lyon to join Man City this summer in a deal worth an initial \u00a330.45 million ($40.6 million), later posted on social media: \u201cGreat day at work,\u201d Cherki shared on X. \u201cThank you for the support.\u201d<\/p>\n
The summer signing leads the Premier League in assists this season with five despite only playing 350 minutes. His teammate Erling Haaland has found the back of the net 15 times in the English top flight in 2025\/26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola urged Cherki to prefer Messi’s simplicity after the winger’s rabona set up a 3-0 win Today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1056,969],"tags":[1162,1019],"class_list":["post-4945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-city","category-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945","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=4945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}