ROY KEANE has rejected claims that Manchester City dropped points against Arsenal because they were tired.
The Cityzens were held to a 1-1 draw by the Gunners following a late equaliser from Gabriel Martinelli on Sunday.
Star man Erling Haaland put City ahead in the opening 10 minutes following a rapid team attack.
However, Arsenal pressed for a long period of the game before eventually levelling things up thanks to Martinelli.
At full-time, Guardiola claimed that City ran out of steam due to their busy schedule, having faced Napoli in the Champions League midweek.
The manager told Sky Sports: “Hats off to the team, their resilience.
“To score is so difficult when you’re not effective at high pressing, you’re not effective in the build-up.
“The mindset has to be strong but we have a lot of fatigue with the same players, we have you know how many injured.
Asked why his team were not effective, he continued: “Arsenal were better and we were incredibly tired.
“Sometimes people don’t realise, the game against Napoli in the Champions League was so emotional, after that a recovery day and the day after you have to (travel) four, five hours (to London).”
“If you want to bring up the fact that now I’m complaining for the schedule, OK. OK, I’m complaining for the schedule! Are you satisfied? Okay!”
Sky Sports pundit Keane was not impressed with Guardiola’s comments and went on to respond: “If you’re talking about fatigue and schedules, we’re in September and they’re on the back of two home matches.
“The United game they were fairly comfortable, Napoli had a man sent off after 20 minutes.
“They’ve not travelled from Russia or Poland when you’ve had a tough away game.
“We all know the challenges of being a footballer is being robust and playing two or three games a week.
“We look at their players on the bench, I’m sure there must be other managers in the Premier League looking at Pep thinking, ‘Pep, if you think you’ve got problems with schedules and the strength in depth, my goodness’.
“I didn’t like that angle Pep was coming from.”
Man City next face Huddersfield in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday.
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