Mateo Kovacic: Man City's Pep Guardiola praises Rodri's 'copy and paste' job

Mateo Kovacic found his goalscoring boots to get Manchester City back to winning ways as coach Pep Guardiola joked it was a “copy and paste” job from Rodri.

Rodri, City's key defensive midfielder, is essentially irreplaceable. But since his season-ending cruciate ligament injury, Kovacic and Ilkay Gündogan have been playing as double pivots.

Such is City's style of play that both played in Fulham's half for most of Saturday's 3-2 win.

This ended a run of two draws in the Premier League since Rodri's injury against Arsenal. Failure to win on Saturday would have meant the worst league run in 2024.

The 30-year-old Kovacic is not a dangerous midfielder. That was never his job at Dinamo Zagreb, Inter Milan, Real Madrid, Chelsea or Manchester City.

But in the end you don't get a list of such clubs without being a quality midfielder.

“He's not a top goalscorer but he may have seen how many goals Rodri scored in that position and copied and pasted. He scored two fantastic goals,” Guardiola told BBC Match of the Day afterwards.

Kovacic's first shot was a deflected shot from a half-cleared corner and his second was a clean shot from the edge of the box early in the second half.

In his post-match press conference, Guardiola added: “They played four to five (defenders). When they have defended with five, there is one man free on the edge of the penalty area – Kovacic.

“The two goals came because they couldn’t defend it in that position. Kovacic was really important. Now the opponents know that they can’t leave him alone, otherwise he can score a goal.”

Kovacic's brace takes him to three league goals this season – he also scored against his former club Chelsea – his best season for Inter Milan since 2014/15.

This was only the second time he scored more than one goal in a game – after a hat-trick for Inter in the 2014 Europa League qualifiers against Icelandic club Stjarnan.

He celebrated a goal by sucking his thumb and told BBC Radio 5 Live: “It means a lot to me because my wife is pregnant so it was great to score a few goals for the little one.”