'Really tricky' How Man City players helped Abdukodir Khusanov fight back

When Abdukodir Khusanov fell into early trouble, his Manchester City teammates came to his aid.

The 20-year-old defender enjoyed a horrific start to life under Pep Guardiola as his weak header was intercepted by Nicolas Jackson and squared for an open goal that gave Chelsea an early lead. Their coach Enzo Maresca spoke of enjoying 'exploiting' the situation as Khusanov struggled badly to compose himself.

However, it did come. He did well to block an effort in the box from Jadon Sancho and was able to put in a few crunching tackles that got the crowd on his side before being substituted after ten minutes of the second half. His first game will also go down as a City victory after their 3-1 comeback win.

Sunday's recovery session at the City Football Academy will end a whirlwind first week for the £33.5m signing from Lens. With his English limited, the squad players who can speak French have been helping to get Pep Guardiola's orders across on the training ground while there is also a staff member who knows Russian and has been able to help Khusanov to get his thoughts across.

Bernardo Silva, one of the French speakers, was one of the players on Saturday who positioned himself more closely to Khusanov after his early errors to bring more solidity in the team and build the defender's confidence. Manu Akanji was next to the youngster and, communicating in English, encouraged his partner to keep things simple.

"I tried to protect him and not bring him into situations where it could be really tricky, especially against a team like Chelsea who have so many good individual players," said Akanji. "I just tried to lift him up and tell him not to think too much but to keep on going, maybe play the safer pass back to Eddy in his