Jack Grealish says there were 'eight minutes of silence' at half-time during Manchester City's comeback win over Tottenham, before Pep Guardiola masterminded their four-goal second-half performance.
After two late first-half goals sent City into half-time at 2-0 down, Grealish admits the dressing room was very quiet for a few minutes, but a pep-talk from Guardiola sent them out fired up. And the City playmaker, who admitted he had doubts he may be substituted at the break, also praised his manager for continuing to change things up during the second half, including a secret instruction involving Ilkay Gundogan.
Describing recent criticism of City's form as an overreaction, Grealish added that the Spurs win can be a catalyst for an upturn in form after the back-to-back defeats against Southampton and Manchester United.
ALSO READ: What Pep Guardiola and Man City players said to each other at half-time vs Tottenham
“It’s a difficult dressing room to be in at half time as you can imagine coming in at 2-0 down," Grealish said.
"For the first seven or eight minutes it was quiet in there. We had a chat amongst ourselves – reflecting on the first half. I thought in the second half we were absolutely outstanding; it was brilliant. We started it perfectly and we fully deserved to win in the end.
“I sit next to Kalvin [Phillips] in the dressing room, and I said to him, ‘are we making any subs here?’ I was desperate not to come off. Against teams like this it’s difficult, they play five at the back, they have [Emerson] Royal who was on my side, [Cristian] Romero and then [Dejan] Kulusevski drops in as well so a lot of time it’s difficult. I have to go back to find Rodri or Nathan [Ake] as when you get doubled up there’s a spare man somewhere else.
“It wasn’t an ideal situation and as you can imagine, Pep had a few words to say at half time – words of encouragement and that fully helped in the second half. We had a bit more urgency, more luck in front of goal and I felt like it was the perfect second-half performance. When you’re down, you want to fight back and be together in the dressing room urging each other on. We wanted to get back out there and improve in the second half.
"As soon as we scored the first goal, for me anyway, you look around at the players on the pitch and on the bench and it was only going to go one way. When we got the second goal you could really feel it. You feel like you’ve got everyone on side and almost unstoppable – especially when you see the players that we’ve got on the pitch. It was a brilliant second half and it did remind me of the final game of last season.”
Grealish was full of praise for another comeback masterminded by Guardiola, and pointed to one specific instruction that helped City increase their control of the game.
“He's obviously a brilliant manager – a pleasure to play for. Games like this when things aren’t going well, he changes a few things, he pulled me over tonight - and I’m not going to go into too much detail because he might keep the tactics for another day - he pulled me over and told me to tell Gundo something during the second half which I thought really helped. He’s a brilliant manager and after the eight minutes of silence in the dressing room he gave us a team talk and fully fired us up for the second half.
“It’s probably overreacting," he added of City's recent form. "Since I’ve been here, I don’t think we’ve lost two games on the spin [up until last week] from what I can remember. Obviously, we lost against Southampton and United, but we responded in the perfect way tonight – especially in the second half. We just need to carry on this good form now and concentrate on ourselves, take each game at a time and fingers crossed for Sunday.
“We just need to keep playing our own football, keep winning games, we’re not thinking about any other teams at the moment. It’s just down to us and we can only concentrate on us. We’re enjoying it, we’re enjoying each other’s company – training together every day and what we need to do now is get back on a winning streak. We did it last season when I was here around December/January time so hopefully we can do that again.”
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