Hugo: “Every game could be decisive”

Hugo Lloris said on his return to action that the second half of the season would be decisive and it’s a message he reiterated after his penalty heroics against City.

It was certainly a case of deja-vu for the skipper, who once again denied City from the penalty spot, just like he did in last season’s Champions League quarter-final. Back in April, it was Sergio Aguero. On Sunday, it was Ilkay Gundogan, crucial saves as we went on to win both matches.

Steven Bergwijn’s dream debut goal and Heung-Min Son struck to secure a 2-0 victory against the defending champions but as Hugo pointed out, there was little time to reflect with a key FA Cup replay against Southampton at the new stadium quickly on the horizon.

Typically, Hugo wasn’t going overboard on his heroics from the spot. “Listen, it’s one important action in the game and it helped the team to stay in the game but after that, we kept going, put a lot of energy, a lot of effort into the performance.

“It’s crazy that there is another game in three days, and we have to be ready because it’s a cup game and we have ambitions in the competition. It’s important to recover well. Every game could be decisive until the end of the season.”

Hugo appreciated the importance of the victory, not just beating City, but three points that lifted us up to fifth in the Premier League, four points behind Chelsea.

He added: “To be honest we were looking for that type of performance for a while now, to beat a big side is going to give us extra confidence. This is what we’ve missed, probably, in the last few weeks and hopefully it will help us get consistency in our performances.

“We have to congratulate all the players and all the people involved. All week we prepared for this game, respected the plan of the manager and it worked well. It’s about details in this type of game but we trained in a way to put all the details in our side today. It’s a big step forward for the team."