Man City 2-1 Swansea

Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini: Garry Monk wasn’t the problem at Swansea Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini believes Swansea may have acted prematurely in dismissing Garry Monk as manager.

Yaya Toure’s shot in the second minute of injury time struck young substitute Kelechi Iheanacho and looped into the net as City escaped with a win from an unconvincing display against Swansea at Etihad Stadium.

Despite fielding a £74million centre-back partnership of Eliaquim Mangala and Nicolas Otamendi, City again failed to keep a clean sheet without Vincent Kompany.

“Kevin couldn’t play the whole game, David Silva was able to play just 60 minutes, maybe if we finished 1-0 it would have been a normal game, the two minutes at the end is not the way we want to do it”.

He said: “I like to play attacking football, I like to score a lot of goals, but I prefer to win 4-0 than 4-2”.

“It was a very important week, a very critical moment in the Premier League because we played very bad against Stoke [in a 2-0 loss last weekend] and a very important achievement to finish at the top of the group in the Champions League. Always when a club change a manager they have a special motivation in the first game, but that is always a different thing, I think they can not change too much in two or three days”.

But Pellegrini appears to have no concerns, telling reporters ahead of Saturday’s visit of managerless Swansea: “I know that we are qualified in every competition, I know that we are top of the table… or we were top of the table just one game ago”.

City were far from their best, perhaps still tired after Tuesday’s exhilarating Champions League win over Borussia Monchengladbach, but De Bruyne was not concerned about that.

But Wes Hoolahan grabbed a second-half equaliser for the struggling Canaries, who have recorded just one victory in their last 10 matches, although they are now unbeaten in their last three home outings.

Andre Ayew has suggested that Swansea City’s performance in the 2-1 defeat to Manchester City will give the squad confidence for their upcoming games.

If this were the Swansea City that was playing last season, then they may have stood a chance against the Citizens.

The goal came at stoppage time as a shot deflected off Nigeria’s Kelechi Iheanacho, for the decisive victor. Curtis, who has been involved with Swansea for 40 years in various roles as player and coach, takes charge of team affairs at Manchester City.

Curtis stated he was looking for the club to appoint a new boss as soon as possible, according to the Guardian: “I don’t mind staying on for a few more games if necessary, but we need a permanent manager”.

“We were not 100 percent recovered [after Gladbach]”, he added.