Manuel Akanji believes Manchester City need to be more clinical in front of goal.
The past week has been an underwhelming one for City as they followed up their massive victory over Arsenal with two draws. They suffered similar issues against both Nottingham Forest and RB Leipzig.
Pep Guardiola's side took the lead in an absolutely dominant first half and had plenty of chances to extend their lead and kill off the game. However, those squandered opportunities, including sitters from Erling Haaland, would prove to be costly as their opponents would fight back and equalise late on.
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It's not exactly panic stations as City are at least making the clear-cut chances which they weren't during their rough patch of form last month but Akanji wants his teammates to start taking them.
“It’s an away game in the knockout stage of the Champions League – it’s never going to be easy; it doesn’t matter which team you face," he said following the draw in Germany. "I think we played really well with the ball in the first half, and we were in control.
"We deserved the goal; we had good pressing but in the second half they changed it up a little bit and it was more difficult for us. We made some mistakes. They put more pressure on us and we didn’t play well with the ball. We gave it away too easily. It’s something we can work on for the second game.
"Leipzig is a really good team. We had three good chances on the corners that we had. We didn’t use those opportunities but hopefully we can improve for the second game. We tried our best, but it doesn’t always happen.
"We’ve got to look at what we did and hopefully improve for the second one. In the end I think it’s deservedly a 1-1. It’s all open, we have an open game and I’m looking forward to the game. Our goal is to win this game, it’s what we work for to go through.”
There has been plenty of debate on how much Erling Haaland is being found by his teammates, especially as countless great runs he made against Leipzig went wanting. Akanji says he tries to look for the striker as often as possible.
“With my position at the back, he is about 40 metres away from me," he explained. "I found him a couple of times in the first half with runs in behind, I played a long ball to him. If he’s not open I’m going to pass it to someone else, if he is open, I will pass it to him if I can. I try my best but it’s not always possible.”
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