Defending Premier League champions Manchester City may have laid down a marker by beating Arsenal 2-0 in their own backyard on Sunday night, but goalscorers Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling have insisted the Sky Blues can’t afford to rest on their laurels and need to build on the win.
Sterling opened the scoring with a fine strike from outside the box in the 14th minute itself, before Bernardo doubled their lead with a sumptuous finish inside the penalty area four minutes after the hour mark.
“Especially at beginning of second half we knew we had to keep going to try and score the second one to finish the game,” Bernardo was quoted as saying by the club website.
Silva had a difficult debut campaign for City but after a solid pre-season, looks set to take the Premier League by storm on his second attempt.
“It wasn’t easy because they started the second half very strong. But at the end of it we won, we beat them, I think we were better than them tonight.”
City weren’t in top gear, but the fact that they eked out a comfortable win away to one of their title rivals will not bode well for the rest of the Premier League.
“To start well is always important so we’re very happy. It was a fantastic game for us, so now we have to keep going. We wanted to be professional, to make it serious like last season and we did it. We scored twice, we didn’t concede, we defended very well and we were a compact team.”
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Sterling, while happy to open his account, wasn’t getting carried away with City’s opening-day win.
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“First game of the season and we wanted to start well and I’m happy to contribute.”
City next face Huddersfield Town at the Etihad Stadium on August 19.
“We’ve just got to focus on ourselves, those games will come. We’ve played a massive game today, Arsenal, we just need to get them out of the way one by one, not worry about (other) results, we’ve got to concentrate on our three points.”