Southampton 4 Manchester City 2: Manuel Pellegrini 'disappointed' in players but insists he had to rotate

City take on Real Madrid in Champions League second leg on Wednesday

Manuel Pellegrini reacts on the touchline during the crushing defeat (Getty )

Manuel Pellegrini said that he was “disappointed” with his Manchester City players, but had been left no option but to rotate them heavily for their 4-2 defeat to Southampton this afternoon.

Pellegrini picked just three players who can expect to start at Real Madrid in Wednesday night’s crucial Champions League semi-final second leg. This led to a listless performance, but Pellegrini said he had no alternative because of the scheduling of this game on Sunday rather than Saturday.

“I am very disappointed, especially in the defending, because we were doing well in the other games,” Pellegrini said. “It was the same players who played other games. We knew before the game it was a risk to put so many players without football against a difficult team.”

“But we have to take those risks because we have an important game on Wednesday. Maybe if we had played this game on Saturday we could have put in more players. But it was a risk similar to the FA Cup [game against Chelsea] that we had to take.”

Southampton celebrate after Sadio Mane scores against Manchester City (Getty)

Pellegrini said that he took responsibility for the result, but left little doubt that he was not impressed by the performance of some of his players.

“It’s my responsibility for the starting eleven,” he said, “and after that you have their performance and you must analyse everything.”

“I don’t know why we defended so bad in the first half. Those were the two goals that decided the game. We scored one goal, we had another clear chance to equalise but we didn’t and after that the set pieces decided the game.”

Ronald Koeman was “impressed” with his “fantastic” players but revealed that he had dropped Graziano Pelle from the match-day squad because he had not been working hard enough this week. “We have competition with the strikers,” he said, “and I wasn’t happy with the intensity of Graziano in training. Then I like to be straight with other players and they deserved to be in the 18.”

Koeman reserved special praise for Sadio Mane who scored a hat-trick. “It was a little bit Sadio, a bit unpredictable, but he was focused and clinical,” he said. “That was one of my criticisms to all our strikers, but we are very productive at home but with chances to score more. It was a great result, and everybody enjoyed the game.”