It was our best performance at the Etihad in many years, but it just wasn’t enough as we fell to a 2-1 loss against Man City on Saturday night.
Nico O’Reilly’s brace proved to be enough for Pep Guardiola’s side, with Lewis Hall grabbing the second league goal of his Toon career in an action-packed first half.
There was controversy with Dan Burn’s disallowed goal, having been judged to be offside following interference from Ruben Dias, but all focus now shifts to Qarabag in the Champions League and Everton next weekend.
Here’s what Eddie Howe had to say on a miserable night in Manchester:
The Etihad Stadium, much like Anfield, is our ultimate bogey venue, so expectations certainly weren’t high that we can disrupt City’s form heading into their inevitable title decider with Arsenal in April. But for much of the contest on Saturday, we more than held our own with our depleted squad.
“Considering everything we have put into the last few weeks, that was a good performance. Wasn’t good enough but we went toe to toe with them.
“We were equals in the game, we were well in it. Didn’t defend the two goals well enough, that’s the disappointment really.
“Belief was there right until the end, that (Harvey) Barnes shot at the end which was a good save. You never quite know how the game will pan out but it is important that you start well and the last few times we have come here, we have conceded early.”
After the shambolic refereeing at Villa Park last weekend, things surely couldn’t go any worse in Saturday’s game?
Fans everywhere were left scratching their heads following Dan Burn’s first half header being disallowed for offside. This was all despite Burn being handled into an offside position by Dias.
“I only saw it from the viewpoint that I thought he was offside. So I didn’t see the push because I’m just looking at a still frame really.”
The disallowed goal, coupled with some very lenient refereeing towards Bernardo Silva for challenges on Burn whilst on a yellow card, will do the officials no favours if they don’t want to continually draw the ire of Howe and the fans.
“I don’t think we were on the right end of decisions today, but I don’t want to go down that road. I’m not one of those managers that wants to continually criticise officials, but I thought again it was one that we didn’t get in the right end of decisions.”
Bernardo commits this foul already on a yellow card… 🤨 pic.twitter.com/gw8Pdiq1tm
— EPL Bible (@EPLBible) February 21, 2026
In the absence of so many key stars like Bruno Guimaraes, Sven Botman and Lewis Miley, Howe and the fans both know there’s a number of players we can always depend on: Lewis Hall is the primary example.
The fullback was impressive once again, grabbing the equaliser, trying to drive us forward and defending well. A real statement performance in his bid to be in Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup squad.
“I think he’s done well, I think he’s benefited from playing and getting fit from the games.
“Lewis is an outstanding technician, outstanding footballer, I think his defending is of a really good level as well. So I’m really happy with him.
“I thought it was a good goal today, I think he’s got goals in him from range, a good striker of a football.”
Saturday’s game was the fourth away fixtures in a row for Howe and the lads, and whilst it wasn’t quite the 5,000 mile round trip to Baku, the travelling is certainly taking its toll, yet Howe continues to welcome the challenge.
“Thought the lads were physically really good considering the games and the journey we had midweek. Big effort to recover so quickly and come here and travel again.
“Seven away games out of eight, it’s been a big stretch on us especially with such a small squad. So I thought the players deserve a lot of credit for how we conducted ourselves today.”
Saturday was just the fourth meeting between ourselves and Man City this season, with a fifth guaranteed and potentially two more in the pipeline if we both manage to reach the Champions League semi-finals and end up in the same half of the draw.
So whilst the loss wouldn’t be the momentum builder Howe would have wanted, the manager feels that the performance won’t reflect what we will offer at home in a couple weeks time.
“I think that football changes so quickly even in a couple of weeks, we’ll be in a different position I’m sure. They’ll be in a different position in the sense of team and setup and system, so you never quite know.
“But certainly there’s things we adjusted from the (Carabao Cup) game that we weren’t happy with, and I thought that was a positive few changes for us. So we’ll look at it again and try and figure out how we can improve our performance.”
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