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Manchester City were held to a 1-1 draw by Brighton and Hove Albion on Wednesday night and could drop further behind Arsenal tonight.
Manchester City winger Jeremy Doku insists the current injury crisis at the Etihad Stadium is no excuse after they were held to a 1-1 draw by Brighton and Hove Albion on Wednesday. The Blues went into half-time ahead after Doku was brought down by Diego Gomez in the area. Initially, the penalty was not given but a VAR review ensured the original decision was overturned and Erling Haaland converted the resulting spot kick.
After Bernardo Silva clipped the post shortly after half-time, City were left rueing their missed chance as Kaoru Mitoma equalised on the hour mark. Haaland would go on to have another couple of chances to score, only to be denied by a Ferdi Kadioglu header off the line and a smart Bart Verbruggen stop as the points were shared at the Etihad Stadium. Reflecting on the draw, Doku expressed his frustration at not securing all three points.
"We’re disappointed. We wanted to win this game. We had the chances to win. So we’re all disappointed," he explained. "We had clear chances that we just needed to score to be more comfortable.. It’s very frustrating because it’s not even the opponent, it’s just us.
"We missed some chances, then we put ourselves in trouble. It’s just us, so it’s a bit frustrating because we know we could’ve been better in terms of scoring. There are some key players missing, but that’s not an excuse. I think the players that were on the pitch today and on the bench are all players that can still win games for us.
"We are waiting for them to come back, but in the meantime we have players that have to step up and have to take their role. We’re not really looking at the table. We just look at ourselves and trying to win games. And at the end, we’ll see where we are."
While Doku was clearly unhappy not to beat Brighton, he did take a moment to praise Max Alleyne, who was thrust into the City defence due to the injury crisis. Alleyne had only recently been on loan at Watford before being recalled due to injuries to Ruben Dias, John Stones and Josko Gvardiol.
Speaking about the youngster's senior debut, Doku said: "He did very well. He trained only one time with us, but today he seemed very confident.
"He did very well. I’m very happy with his performance." City have a break from Premier League action now as they turn their focus to the FA Cup third round where League One Exeter await.
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