Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has admitted that his team's performance just wasn't "good enough", as they could only salvage a 1-1 draw with Everton in their opening home fixture of the Premier League season.
Here for results
After last Saturday's 2-0 win over Brighton and considering their record in opening home fixtures in the Premier League era, Guardiola would have been confident of collecting three points against his old friend and team-mate Ronald Koeman.
The first-half proved disastrous for The Citizens as Wayne Rooney's 200th league goal gave Everton the lead, before Kyle Walker's controversial red card before the break reduced them to ten men.
City played well in the second period despite the numerical disadvantage and were rewarded with a equaliser from substitute Raheem Sterling. They continued to push for a winner after Morgan Schneiderlin's own controversial dismissal made the numbers even but they failed to capitalise and Guardiola shared his disappointment post-match.
"We are here for the results," Guardiola told mancity.com. "We made absolutely everything to try and win with ten men against a good Everton team."
"I prefer to win the game, we were not able to," the coach conceded. "We want to start well at home. It’s just the second game and we’ll improve."
"We tried to win the game after half time even though we had 10 against 11," the Catalan added. "Nobody can say we didn’t try but, of course, we are here to analyse the results and it wasn’t good enough."
Got the whole package
Monday's stalemate did see a lot of frustrating performances for a minority of City's superstars, one of those was Kevin de Bruyne who just couldn't seem to find that final touch against a tough Toffees defence.
One person who did pick up the Belgian's slack was summer signing Bernardo Silva, the Portugal international was introduced with 20 minutes to play and played some excellent football and Guardiola was full of praise for the former AS Monaco man post-match.
"I think good players can adapt everywhere and very quickly," he said on Silva's performance. "He has goals and assists."
"He doesn’t lose the ball," Guardiola concluded. "Which is very important to me."