Nathan Ake acknowledges Man City's stumble as flawless start dies at Wolves

Hwang Hee-Chan's winner at Molineux ended City's 100 per cent opening to the Premier League season following six straight wins.

They slipped to a 2-1 defeat on Saturday after being outbattled by the hosts and defender Ake conceded the champions fell short.

He said: "Yeah, it was (an overall disappointing performance) but I always look at myself and I wasn't happy with myself.

"So that's first and foremost and the team collectively should have done better as well but obviously I will look at myself first.

"I think we just reflect. We are hard on ourselves but we also know nothing is going to change now. It's happened. The only thing we can do now is look at it tomorrow, the day after, and focus on the next one.

"Losing two games in a row (after a Carabao Cup defeat at Newcastle) is not what anyone wants in our team. We have to pick ourselves up and go again."

City go to RB Leipzig in the Champions League on Wednesday before a showdown with Arsenal at the Emirates on Sunday.

They remain top but are just a point ahead of Tottenham and the Gunners and Spurs will go above them if they beat Luton on Saturday.

"We just have to recover and look at what went wrong," said Ake. "We have a midweek game first so we have to focus on that, get our rhythm back and then focus on the next one.

"It's frustrating. Sometimes you can have games like that and it's about how you pick yourself up and go again."

Wolves took the lead after Ruben Dias deflected Pedro Neto's cross into his own net before Julian Alvarez's free-kick levelled the match after the break.

Hwang struck with 22 minutes left to win it for Wolves and ease any growing pressure on boss Gary O'Neil following a run of one win from their previous six league games.

"It (the criticism) is definitely unfair," said captain Max Kilman. "Pressure comes with football and when a new manager comes in, if the results are not coming in early, of course there will be even more added pressure.

"But within the squad, people can't see behind the scenes and the amount of work him and his team are doing and how they're setting us up tactically.

"The quality of training has been phenomenal and it's a matter of time before we started picking up the results.

"From the first game against Manchester United, the performances have been there, but there's been little moments lacking in concentration where you get punished by the top teams.

"We've had really tough start against really tough teams and we took the hit, but the manager's game plan in all the games has been really good.

"We have to push on from this. It's given us a lot of confidence, so hopefully we can kick on." 

 

Read More: Pep Guardiola: Wolves were better than Man City on the day (planetsport.com)