'We have two weeks to improve' - Alderweireld, Kane and Dier on City defeat

Toby Alderweireld, Harry Kane and Eric Dier were in philosophical mood after tasting defeat in the final match of our US tour in Nashville on Saturday night.

Manchester City called the tune for large spells in Music City but while the result, a 3-0 loss, was something of a flat note, the lads, although disappointed, were looking at the bigger picture as we build up to the start of the new Premier League season in a fortnight's time.

Here's what they had to say...

Toby Alderweireld

On the outcome
"We’ve had a tough week of training hard, but the quality has to be better and we all know that. That’s why you play in pre-season. We don’t think ‘it’s pre-season, we don’t care’ – we do care. We now have two weeks to improve ourselves, to get to the level we were at last season and become even better. You don’t want to lose, of course, but we will learn and improve.”

On completing the full game
"It’s still pre-season. We try a few things, we got 90 minutes under our belts and that’s good. The next game is Juventus at Wembley so we’ll aim to get a positive result all ready for the first Premier League match against Newcastle. I’ve played two lots of 90 minutes now, so I’m really happy with that. We had a really tough session on Friday, you could see that, so we’re training hard to get better. No-one wants to lose but we don’t have to look to the result, we have to get better and work hard."

Do you feel good for the work-out?
"Yes, I’ll get strong from this. Now we travel back, we’ll work hard and it’s one more pre-season game against Juventus next Saturday. We have to be ready when the Premier League starts."

Harry Kane

Thoughts on the game
"It’s great to get the fitness in and that was my first 90 minutes, so that’s good. It’s obviously disappointing to lose and it shows we’ve still got a bit to work on before the start of the season. We can’t read too much into the results, win, lose or draw. We’ll keep working on what we need to work on, try to get fitter and be ready for Newcastle. That’s the target and it's only a couple of weeks away now. We’ll keep working hard. It's Juventus next weekend, another great game for us. It’s about getting fit and ready for that Newcastle game."

How do you sum up the tour?
"It’s been incredible. Every game we’ve played has been pretty much like a home game through the support. It’s fantastic, big thanks to the fans for coming out to watch us. Every time we come to America it’s like that and hopefully our supporter groups will keep growing and growing and the Club will get bigger and bigger."

Eric Dier

How do you look back on the game?
“Obviously we’d like to win every game but sometimes you can’t and I think the most important thing is that the work rate’s high and we try to add some good performances. Obviously you’d like to win every game because winning becomes a habit and we want to have that habit so obviously from that point of view it’s disappointing. We’ve worked hard, but we know we’ve still got a lot to improve on and we’ve got two weeks to do that.”