Rico Lewis reflects on “tough week” for Manchester City after Rodri injury and successive draws | OneFootball

Manchester City’s Rico Lewis has reflected on a “tough week” for the football club both on and off the football pitch at the Etihad Stadium.

Pep Guardiola and his players have succumbed to three draws in their last four matches, including dropped points in back-to-back Premier League matches alongside a serious injury sustained by integral midfield star Rodri.

An opening Champions League clash against Inter saw the two sides play out a 0-0 draw, before Arsenal visited the Etihad in a dramatic 2-2 outcome rescued by John Stones in the eighth minute of added time.

49 hours later and Manchester City were back in action again, in the first of two matches in the same week without Rodri, as life in the absence of the Spaniard began, with a 2-1 win over Watford in the Carabao Cup followed by a 1-1 draw at Newcastle.

Speaking after City’s 1-1 draw at St James’ Park on Saturday afternoon, Rico Lewis described the week just gone as “tough” when taking account both the results and the injury sustained by Rodri during the draw to Arsenal.

“It’s been a tough week with tough games,” said the 19-year-old. “When you look in the grand scheme of things, maybe we’ll be happy in the future with how we did this week but right now we just want to go onto the next one.”

He continued, “If you look into the details of the games, we’d probably take a point against Arsenal. It was a tough game. Here, we want to win but it’s a tough place to come and not many people will come here and win easily. It’s difficult to say but that is football.

“Even though you could look at it as two points from two of our hardest games of the season, we have to take the negatives and positives, improve on what we can do better and also continue to do what we were doing well.”

Rico Lewis will no doubt experience much greater responsibility in the coming weeks and months as Pep Guardiola will deploy the teenager in a mixture of roles, most notably in defensive midfield and right-back.

It remains to be seen whether Manchester City will look to soften the blow of Rodri’s absence with recruitment in January, despite limited options and very few clubs being open to sales of top-level players.