Following a rare trophyless season for Manchester City, midfielder Bernardo Silva has suggested some of his teammates do not deserve to be at the club.
City will finish the game without a trophy for the first time since Pep Guardiola’s first season at the club in 2016/2017 after Eberechi Eze scored the only goal in the FA Cup final on Saturday.
They’re currently 18 points behind champions Liverpool in the Premier League and will need to win one of their last two games against Bournemouth (H) and Fulham (A) to be sure of Champions League qualification, with demotion to the Conference League still a possibility.
And Silva claimed after defeat in the FA Cup final that he knows “who you can go to war with” in the City team and insists that “something needs to change” ahead of next season.
“You learn a lot of new things, in the bad moments you learn new things,” Silva said. “Who you can go to war with, first of all. Because it’s in the bad moments that you see who the real ones are.
“And a lot of things that were good for us – not to take things for granted, for our fans, for the club. Don’t lower our standards.
“It’s a tough season for us. It’s a really, really bad season for us. Something has to change next year.
“It’s for the big bosses to decide. I have my opinion but definitely something needs to change when you don’t perform at this level.”
Silva insists City’s “level needs to be very, very high to be champions again” given the quality now in the Premier League and insists they’re no focused on their remaining two games of the season to ensure qualification for the Champions League, which will give the club a boost both in terms of attracting top players and in being able to afford them.
“We have two important games because qualifying for the Champions League or not can make a huge difference for the club financially and for us,” he added.
“I know we’ve got people used to winning every year. And people demand this team to win every year.
“Football is a tough sport and it’s not easy to beat these teams, especially in the Premier League. Like Palace, this team has a lot of individual quality.
“If you go and look around teams in the Premier League, all of them have two, three players that are unbelievable players. Our standard and our level needs to be very, very high to be champions again. And that’s the level that we want to reach again.”
