Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has revealed that he is more than content to allow striker Sergio Aguero to take the next penalty that the club is awarded, provided that the Argentine has the faith in his own abilities.
During Manchester City’s first leg Champions League encounter against Tottenham Hotspur in the quarterfinals, Aguero’s weak penalty was saved by Spurs goalkeeper Hugo Lloris at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium. The visitors had a great chance to grab an away goal but ended up losing the game 1-0 due to Son Heung-Min’s late goal, with the workload of making a comeback at the City of Manchester Stadium on Tuesday night.
The Premier League champions now travel to Selhurst Park on Sunday to face Crystal Palace but Guardiola has stated that his players should not be feeling low because of the fear to fail in this crunch period of the season where Liverpool are hot on their heels for a title challenge.
When asked by reporters if he would like Aguero to take the next spot kick, the 48-year-old manager replied, “If he believes he’s going to score, yeah. He then pointed to his head and explained, “Penalties is here.”
The Spanish boss went on to add that he does not prefer players that don’t want to take responsibility, “I’m not going to call him by telephone from the bench. They have to know it. I admire the guys who take responsibility. I don’t like it when players don’t want to play. I don’t like that. When I see a player who can receive the ball and doesn’t move to receive the ball, I don’t like that because I cannot help them. We can help them with many things and make a lot of mistakes but if a player doesn’t want to play there is nothing to do.”
Getting back onto back his confident players to step up from the spot Guardiola said, “That’s why I admire the guys who take the responsibility of penalties and I know they suffer when they cannot score to help the team. In those situations, I will always be close to them and nothing changes.”
