Ilkay Gundogan has accused his Manchester City team-mates of a lack of desire and the wrong attitude – ahead of tomorrow’s derby showdown.
Pep Guardiola’s side were dumped out of the EFL Cup after losing 2-0 at Southampton on Wednesday, with midfielder Gundogan not holding back on what went wrong. Gundogan claimed City have been missing something in recent weeks and said Guardiola’s players have not been showing the same desire that has brought them such success in recent years.
The damning comments came as Guardiola tries to lift his players for the trip to resurgent local rivals Manchester United, who will be out to avenge their 6-3 defeat earlier this season.
“Definitely I would share that it was a lack of attitude, lack of confidence, lack of commitment you know,” said Gundogan. “I feel like, especially today, but even in the last few weeks, we had games where we could have done better.
“Maybe we’ve won games, but I feel like something was a little bit missing, something’s off. Obviously, with the quality we have in the squad, we’re always able to win games, even when we don’t have the best day.
“But at the moment it feels like there’s a special recipe missing in the team – performances, the desire and hunger is maybe not as it was in recent years.
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“It’s tough, against even a side that’s struggling a little bit in the Premier League right now, but we knew that Southampton was always tough to play, always very aggressive and always able to score a goal.
“Unfortunately we made it too easy for them and in the end we need to admit that with a performance like that, we deserved to lose. “Hopefully it was the right wake-up call for us. If it is it’s something good we can take out of the game.
“We have to do better, we need to start the hard work again and be humble, because things will not come to us automatically – we need to deserve them.”
