Guardiola Promises Better Performance For Man City

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola insisted there was still room for improvement from Raheem Sterling after the forward’s astonishing performance in a 6-1 win over Southampton that returned his team to the top of the Premier League.

The defending champions remain on course to better last season’s record-breaking tally of 106 goals after another emphatic display that leaves them with a plus-29 goal difference just 11 games into the new campaign.

Sterling was the pick of the attacking talents during Sunday’s match at the Etihad Stadium, scoring two goals and providing three assists as City raced into a 3-0 lead inside 18 minutes.

“He is a top player but still he is so young to be considered the world’s best,” said Guardiola when asked to rank Sterling among the game’s current leading players.

“He is in incredible form, he is sharp, fast, clever, fighting, decisive, he can play both sides and can play in the middle and receive the ball between the lines and commit the centre-backs with a lot of aggression.

His performance means Sterling has now been directly involved in 40 league goals — scoring 24 times and making 16 assists — since the start of last season, and Sunday’s was a timely individual display given that the 23-year-old England forward this week agreed a new five-year contract with the club, worth a reported £300,000 a week.

“It was an incredible performance but still with the young guys like him and Leroy (Sane) I would feel he can improve,” added Guardiola.

“Still, he loses simple balls, like the Tottenham game when he made an amazing assist in the first few minutes but then lost a lot of balls.”

Wesley Hoedt turned Sane’s sixth-minute cross into his own goal before Sterling laid on the first of his assists, crossing for Sergio Aguero to claim the 150th Premier League goal of his career — putting the Argentine equal-eighth with Michael Owen in the division’s all-time goalscoring list.