Ilkay Gundogan says will try to repeat last season’s goal scoring form

Manchester City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan was one of the standout players of Pep Guardiola’s side last time around. The German midfielder scored a personal best of 17 for 2020/21 season but accepts that it will be hard to repeat that feat. Nonetheless, Gundogan assured that he will do his very best to repeat last season’s goal rush as the Premier League champions begin their title defence on Sunday. “I guess most people are going to expect it again, so maybe that is the most difficult part that comes of it, when you show you are able to do something, so you have to prove that you are able to do it again,” Gundogan was quoted as saying by the club’s website.

“I don’t really consider myself so much as a goal scorer – obviously when I have a chance I will try to and try to help my team in the best way possible. If you have the feeling that you are going to get in a lot of goal scoring positions, obviously you need to work on your finishing and on doing the final thing for your team. I will not be unhappy if I just score three, four or five goals this season, but we go on to win the league again and we play great football. If that happens, I will be happy. I expect from myself to do the best possible things that I can do to make my team as great as possible.”

Difficult start

It is a difficult opening day test for Premier League champions Manchester City away to Tottenham Hotspur. City have lost all three visits to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and are yet to score at Spurs’ new home. The hosts for Sunday, under new manager – Nuno Espirito Santo – will look to start well in his first league match with Spurs. However, Gundogan feels that it is vital for City to get to the international break with as many points on the board as possible.

“It is a tough start,” he said. “Everything would have been tough to be honest, because of the circumstances I feel like there is nothing easy anymore. We are expecting a difficult game and in general I think our opening fixtures are very difficult, but it is the way it is and it is the same thing for all teams. We just take it as it is and try to do our best. We will obviously try to start well, better than last season, at least until the international break.

“It still feels like we are in the middle of pre-season even though the first game is on Sunday. We need to be ready, I guess more ready mentally than physically. But how ready can you be with just a week or ten days of training and then go straight into the season? It is about being ready mentally. It is similar as it was to the last few years, so it hasn’t changed that much. We are at the point now where we are just used to it and just have to accept it. In some years we started better and in some years we started worse.”