Gylfi reflects on tough night

Manchester City didn’t necessarily need an extra man on the pitch to make life difficult for us on Wednesday night, conceded Gylfi Sigurdsson.

The dismissal of left-back Danny Rose five minutes into the second half spelled the end for us at White Hart Lane, with free-scoring City going on to register a 5-1 victory.

Our 10 men did put up a fight, substitute Etienne Capoue pulling a goal back shortly after the visitors’ third, but Manuel Pellegrini’s men made the most of their numerical advantage to continue their impressive run of high-scoring victories.

Icelandic midfielder Gylfi , playing on the left, admitted afterwards that the visitors would have been hard to contain – even if both sides had equal numbers on the pitch.

“Playing against them with 11 men is tough but with 10 men is even tougher against quality players like this, because they are so good going forward and it’s hard to defend against them,” the 24-year-old said.

“I think City started the game better and they could have scored a few goals in the first 25 minutes or so.

“Then we got back into the game and we started not too badly in the second half. Obviously the penalty and the sending off made it quite difficult in the second half.”

Wednesday night’s game marked Gylfi’s first start since Boxing Day’s draw with West Bromwich Albion, our Icelandic international having come on as a substitute in the recent victory at Swansea City after being sidelined with a calf problem for a few weeks.

“I only came on for 25 minutes against Swansea and started against City but, as it turned out, it was not a good game to have started in,” added Gylfi, who is already looking ahead to Saturday’s trip to Hull City – where we’ll look to continue our fantastic run of away wins.

“Obviously Naughts (full-back Kyle Naughton) came on to try and tighten things up at the back, but I’ve just got to make sure I’m ready on Saturday.

“That’s how we’ve got to look at it; we’ve just lost but we need to move on and get ourselves ready for the Hull game, which is a massive game for us. We need to take another three points and we were on a good run before this game so hopefully that will continue.”