Pep Guardiola refuted the idea that his job is easy after Manchester City cruised to a 2-0 victory over Arsenal.

The Premier League champions started without Kevin De Bruyne, David Silva, Vincent Kompany and Leroy Sane, but they proved surplus to requirements as Raheem Sterling and Bernardo Silva sealed the points.

After the game, talkSPORT’s Ian Abrahams asked the City boss if it’s ‘easy’ managing such a fine group of players – a question Guardiola took issue with.

He said: “There is a lot of work behind this. If you believe this is easy, then you make a big mistake.

“There is a lot of work from the staff, the managers, for the club. Especially for the players.

“It is not like this: go there and play. There is a lot of work.”

The Spaniard, however, does think City made light-work of the tie and could’ve won by more, despite a short period of Arsenal pressure.

He added: “In the second-half, we started with a few problems because Arsenal pushed up and in that situation we scored a goal where maybe we don’t deserve it.

“But, we have to be honest, in the first-half we deserved two or three more goals. At the end, when you analyse the game, we were better than Arsenal.”