Manchester City and England’s number one Joe Hart insisted the Blues will bounce back from Sunday’s defeat to Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane.
Spurs stunned City with three goals in seven second-half minutes to come from behind and claim a crucial win.
But the Blues’ stopper believes tiredness was not an issue in City’s collapse and urged his team mates to improve against West Ham United on Saturday.
“We will bounce back easily – it’s what we do,” he told CityTV. “We’ve proved that many a time.
“We’ve got another big game coming up for us in a week – a home game – so it’s always key to win at home and then we’ve got the FA Cup final and all the lads are trying to get their spots for it.
“We can’t complain of tiredness. We messed up in Europe so we’ve had plenty of weeks rest and not played that many games, so I don’t think that’s what it is down to. It’s just a poor second half.”
City had led since ex-Arsenal man Samir Nasri finished a good team move with a side-footed finish into the corner after just five minutes.
However, Clint Dempsey, Jermaine Defoe and Gareth Bale all took advantage of some slack defending in the second-half to turn the game around.
And Hart – who turned 26 on Friday – believes City have only themselves to blame for their collapse.
“We took the lead and we didn’t kick on from there,” he said. “The second-half we just kind of existed and we paid the price.
“I just thought we took our foot of the gas. We just existed and looked for the 1-0 win and you can’t do that when you come to places like this. Sometimes the ball gets sucked in the net, and we’ve got to learn from that.
“We were comfy, but I just feel we didn’t go one way or another with it.”
Image courtesy of Manchester City, via CityTV, with thanks.
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