Guardiola Blames Long Travel for Man City's Loss to Tottenham

• Manchester City's title ambitions took another hit as they fell to Tottenham
• Harry Kane's record-setting goal proved the difference in the London clash
• Pep Guardiola had an unusual excuse in defence of his team's poor showing

Tottenham Hotspur beat current EPL champions, Manchester City 1-0 in Spurs' first game without head coach, Antonio Conte, who underwent surgery for gall bladder problem recently.

Harry Kane scored the only goal of the match to break Jimmy Greaves' record as Tottenham's all-time top scorer, also becoming the third player to score 200 Premier League goals.

City boss, Pep Guardiola did the unusual and made a ridiculous excuse in defence of his team's lackadaisical performance against a coachless Spurs, as reported by Metro UK.

Pep blames long travel

Over the course of his 15 years in football management, the former Barcelona man is not known as one to explain away poor form, preferring to take a tactical look at where things went wrong.

Harry Kane: Tottenham's goal king

Football

Speaking in his post-match conference however, as quoted by Sun UK, Guardiola blamed having to travel across the English capital for his team's exhaustion.

“It is four and a half hours to get to a hotel. It’s so exhausting to come to London, I’m sorry. We need to come back to Manchester and prepare for the game against Aston Villa,” he said.

According to Google Maps, the distance by bus between Manchester and London is indeed four-plus hours, with some asking why the team travelled by road and not by air, for instance.

Some have now drawn comparison between Guardiola and Liverpool boss, Jurgen Klopp, who always has an excuse for his team's poor form.

Guardiola strike pair fails test

Sports Brief earlier reported on Guardiola deploying the strike pair of Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez, who failed their first full test together.

Guardiola's strike pair fails first full test against Tottenham

Football

The two strikers completed a full 90 minutes against Spurs and failed to have a shot on target, in what was an experiment gone totally awry.

There has been growing concerns at Haaland's ineffectiveness at breaking down stubborn defences, despite Guardiola's insistence otherwise.