LONDON — Manchester City captain Bernardo Silva has slammed the schedule makers in the immediate aftermath of their 1-1 draw at Arsenal on Sunday.
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City conceded a 93rd-minute equalizer to deny them a third win in seven days, as Pep Guardiola lined up the same team for the third game in a row following victories against Manchester United and Napoli.
And it is the schedule of the latter game, a Thursday night home victory in the Champions League, which has Bernardo Silva, Pep Guardiola and everyone at City fuming.
Speaking to reporters in the tunnel after the draw at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday, Silva hit out at Arsenal having over 48 hours extra rest compared to City as the Gunners played at Athletic Bilbao in the Champions League on Tuesday.
“I am saying this because we didn’t lose. If we lost, I wouldn’t say this. But the reality is, we cannot come to one of the most important games in the season with such a disadvantage, in terms of rest. It is not fair to play one of these games like this. It is just not right,” Silva said. “They had five days, and we had two and a half days. In one of the most important games, this cannot happen. I wasn’t feeling in a perfect condition to play like this, and people who have not played at the highest level don’t know how it feels to play a game like this. You need to be at your best condition. We saw Khusanov getting injured because these games demand a lot. I feel it is just frustrating that we couldn’t be at our best level simply because of the decision of someone that thinks it is fair to come away after two and a half less days than Arsenal. But in the end we did well in terms of fighting, resilience and sticking together and sticking to the plan. It is just frustrating we conceded very late in the game.”
Asked if he felt the difference physically in the second half as City tired, Silva’s rant continued.
“I felt the difference in the first half. If you play at the highest level you know that two days playing against one of the best teams in the league, away, with the travel, you need at least one more day to recover. It doesn’t matter if Arsenal had four, five or six days (to recover), just give us one more day, and that gives us three-and-a-half days, and then you make it an even game. Two-and-a-half-days is not enough to recover our bodies and to perform at the highest level. It is just not enough.”
Going back to last season, City have five losses of their last eight Premier League matches immediately following a European midweek match (2-1-5 record) and a lack of rest time is clearly something Silva and his teammates are focused on.
Silva was asked if Arsenal had ‘got away with one’ because City’s players were clearly exhausted, with Erling Haaland coming off through tiredness and plenty of others had nothing left in the tank as they picked up injuries too.
“I don’t know. I do respect a lot the way they played, and they are really good at what they do, and even if we were in better physical conditions it would have been a very difficult game. We can lose any game in good conditions or bad conditions, but we need the respect and the common sense to be at the same level to compete,” Silva added.
Moving forward, what can be done to try and make this kind of situation fairer? Do captains of teams, like Silva, need to get together with the leagues and regulators to ask for change?
“We have tried. They don’t listen to us,” Silva said. “It is what it is. We would like to change something. But it never changes. It does not really matter, but for the fans, for the respect of the clubs, and for the fairness of the competition, I don’t think what happened today was good.”
Silva admitted that playing every three days is fine, but he believes that for these huge games between Premier League title contenders there should be an equal amount of rest days.
“Look, the schedule is the schedule and I understand you have different competitions and UEFA, the Premier League, and the broadcasters want to make their money and I understand all those sorts of things. What we ask is that we don’t mind playing every three or four days, and we don’t mind playing 60 games because we are used to that,” Silva said. “But what we ask for is common sense because this is one of the biggest games of the season. And it is not because of us. I don’t think that they are trying to make us lose a game. It could happen to Arsenal or Liverpool in a few months. But when you are playing an Arsenal vs City or a City vs Liverpool or Liverpool vs Arsenal, you need to have a bit of common sense, and understanding of these situations and in such an important game, the players need to be in the same physical conditions otherwise I don’t think it is fair. I know it might have happened to other teams in the past. Today it did not feel like we were in the same physical condition as them.”
