Former Manchester City manager, Manuel Pellegrini believes Claudio Bravo is the best goalkeeper in the world. The Chile international goalkeeper moved to Manchester for a sum of £17 million in the summer. The 33-year-old hasn’t been as impressive as many Manchester City fans were hoping for and has only two clean sheets in 11 appearances for the club in the Premier League.
Many experts and pundits including the club’s fans have raised doubts over replacing England international Joe Hart with the former FC Barcelona shot-stopper. Joe Hart now plays for Serie A club FC Torino as Pep Guardiola felt he was not convincing enough to represent Manchester City anymore.
But Manuel Pellegrini believes that the 33-year-old goalkeeper is receiving unnecessary criticism from the fans and the English media just after 11 appearances for the club in the Premier League.
“He is criticised a lot but Claudio Bravo is the best goalkeeper in the world," said the former Etihad coach. “The English press are very hard on him, as they are with the entire world. And if Bravo has gone from Real Sociedad to Barcelona and Barcelona to Man City it is because he is the best goalkeeper in the world."
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Pellegrini stressed that defensive problems were not the reason behind Manchester City’s loss to Chelsea last week and that there is more to it than just blaming the defence. Manchester City lost 3-1 to Chelsea last week with two players being sent off.
“I don’t think we lost because of the defensive problems,” said Guardiola. “Believe me, I think that’s not the reason why. If you analyze the goals, yeah, we conceded three goals. But do we talk about the game or the three goals?"
Pellegrini also spoke about the kind of game City played under him and that they conceded goals but dominated games with chances and possession, “Always in my career we conceded few goals, because we dominated through ball possession and created chances to be far away from that."
The Chilean stressed that Guardiola’s team played good football against Chelsea but the Blues won the game with their counter attack as too many City players were upfront trying to score goals.
“At the end, Chelsea created chances on the counter-attack because we had too many players up front while we were trying to score goals.
“But I don’t think we lost because of that [defensive problems]. We played quite well against a good team," he added.
Manchester City are currently 4th in the Premier League table with 30 points from 14 games. Guardiola’s men will take on defending champions Leicester City in their next outing.
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