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Pep Guardiola was happy to win at the Bernabeu but clear on the improvements that Manchester City still need to make
It must have been an immensely satisfying trip to the Bernabeu for Pep Guardiola this week. The Manchester City is used to the Real Madrid fans giving him a terrible reception and the players finding a way to make his night a misery but Wednesday bucked the trend.
Rather than having to talk afterwards about how well the Blues had played in defeat, he was able to discuss the improvements that are needed from his side while walking home with three points that leave all of the pressure with a club that he has been grown up to be hostile to. City's Champions League campaign is looking a lot rosier, yet the players have not been allowed to take their feet from the ground.
Most of Guardiola's critique referred to the team itself. As a whole, the performance needs to be better if they are to excel in the knockout stages of this competition when it comes back in February because a better Madrid or another side could punish them in a tie where there is little margin for error.
However, the manager also made specific mention of Erling Haaland when presented with another goalscoring statistic about the Norwegian. A first-half penalty added to the list of grounds the No.9 has scored at and enhances his ludicrously good record in European competition, although Guardiola was more bothered about his drop in effectiveness in recent matches.
"We have to find him more, he has to be more involved in the game - he has not been in the last one or two games - so we have to reflect and think about how we can get him more present in our game," he said. "But the numbers speak for themselves."
Until Haaland was dragged down by Toni Rudiger in the box on Wednesday night, most of the discussion around his play centred on how few touches he had. And while that debate is largely tired and tedious, the fact that it has returned in recent matches highlights the fact that Haaland has not been as involved as he was for the first few months of the season.
Since the November international break, he has scored just twice in six matches where City have scored 14 collectively. Blanks against Newcastle, Leeds, Leverkusen (off the bench) and Sunderland have not for the most part been down to big chances missed but instead a lack of chances created for him.
As Guardiola indicated on Wednesday, that is a twofold issue rather than being a singular fault. A team built for Haaland's strengths needs to supply him as they were doing earlier in the campaign, but the man himself needs to make sure he is staying ahead of the game.
It is a moving target as well, because the more goals Haaland scores the more opposition teams will look to try and mark him out of the game. If that means that other City players find space to score then it is still a positive result for the Blues but Guardiola is always looking for his striker to be the leading light in his team.
Raising the issue is always easiest after a win, and especially a win at the Bernabeu, and the task now for City is to make Haaland more present. The hope will be that the improvement can be immediate, although as long as it is there for the knockout rounds of the Champions League then City will be even more threatening for Real and the rest.
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