Manchester City\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pre-season programme ended in defeat against Stuttgart despite a late rally at the Mercedes-Benz Arena.<\/p>\n
The Swabians unpicked City\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s defence four times in the first half – three times within one dizzying seven-minute spell \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to the delight of most of the 40,122 crowd.<\/p>\n
At that point City were facing the prospect of a heavy defeat, but to their credit Manuel Pellegrini’s men battled on. Substitutes Kelechi Iheanacho and Edin Dzeko grabbed well-taken consolations late in the game, with Raheem Sterling providing both assists<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.fansnetwork.co.uk\/images\/news\/14628_g.jpg<\/p>\n
Philippe Coutinho returned to action with a goal to help Liverpool to a 2-0 victory over HJK Helsinki in Finland on Saturday in their latest pre-season encounter.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old made his first appearance of the summer for the Reds following an extended break and came closest to breaking the deadlock when his first-half drive was deflected onto the crossbar.<\/p>\n
However, after substitute Divock Origi had opened the scoring with 18 minutes remaining thanks to a well-taken finish, Coutinho found the net with a deflected curler from the corner of the box to put the seal on a solid afternoon’s work for Liverpool.<\/p>\n
Brendan Rodgers: “I was pleased we were better in the second half than the first. We tried to look at something in the first half.<\/p>\n
“But our fluency was really good in the second half and obviously we scored a couple of really good goals. I’m pleased – another good workout for us in the last of our pre-season games abroad.<\/p>\n
“In terms of everything that the players have been through – all the travel around the world – they are in good condition.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.fansnetwork.co.uk\/images\/news\/14629_g.jpg<\/p>\n
<#mcfc #lfc><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stuttgart 4 Manchester City 2 Manchester City\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pre-season programme ended in defeat against Stuttgart despite a late rally at the Mercedes-Benz Arena. The Swabians unpicked City\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s defence four times in the first half – three times within one dizzying seven-minute spell \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to the delight of most of the 40,122 crowd. At that point City […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}