Pep Guardiola PRAISES Arsenal star for mocking Erling Haaland – before telling 5-word comment

Arsenal’s hammering of Manchester City was punctuated by frequent attempts from Arsenal to wind up Erling Haaland, with Pep Guardiola brushing off the mockery of his star striker

Pep Guardiola delivered a typically blunt response to Arsenal’s attempts to wind up Erling Haaland.

Manchester City were hammered at the Emirates on Sunday evening, eventually going down 5-1 to Mikel Arteta’s men. The game was punctuated by frequent digs from the Gunners towards Haaland.

The Norwegian had told Arteta to ‘stay humble’ following the reverse fixture in September, as well as being involved in clashes with Gabriel and Myles Lewis-Skelly. Arsenal took the opportunity to hit back at Haaland with both hands on Sunday.

First, Gabriel screamed in the striker’s face as he celebrated Martin Odegaard’s opener. Then Lewis-Skelly copied Haaland’s signature celebration after scoring the Gunners’ third goal.

And finally after the game, Kendrick Lamar’s song ‘Humble’ rang around the speakers at the Emirates. Guardiola was questioned on that escalating mockery following the game, particularly on Lewis-Skelly’s celebration.

When asked about the incident, he said: “I didn’t see… they did that?” That’s good.” The Spaniard then sat silently looking at the table for a number of seconds, before again saying: “That’s good.”

On his way out of the press conference, he turned to City’s press officer and asked: “Did you like my answer?” Guardiola was left desperately disappointed with his side’s performance as they endurded a largely miserable evening.

“I only regret the last 25 minutes, we forgot to do what we should do, what we have done for 65/70 minutes. Of course it’s a difficult game starting in this stadium, against that team in the first minutes it’s happened many times this season,” he said. “But after 10/15 minutes I think we took the game and played really, really, really, really good and we are in it after 1-1 and good momentum we pass to make the transition with Omar [Marmoush] and a deflection and the third goal.

“But after that, we then continued to do what you have to do in terms defensively and [be a] little bit more patient. and when you’re playing that way they can run and of course at 3-1 they are comfortable, its more difficult.

“I regret the last 15/20 minutes, the rest was a really good game for our side. It’s difficult to understand when you see the result but this is my feeling. It’s happened all season, we are giving away too many things, we are aware this cannot happen, it happened.

“You have to overcome [it], you cannot lose the control, it’s 90/95 minutes. You cannot finish in the way we played, we could’ve scored three more but the team has to be stable it doesn’t matter what happened.”

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