Platt wants City to keep improving

Manchester City’s assistant manager David Platt acknowledged the champions are still below their best after beating Queens Park Rangers 3-1.

Goals from Yaya Toure, Edin Dzeko and Carlos Tevez sealed all three points for the hosts at Etihad Stadium on Saturday, in a re-run of the game which saw City win last season’s English Premier League title on goal difference ahead of Manchester United.

Despite coming out on top, Platt was disappointed to concede a goal, and knows the team have plenty of room for improvement during the campaign ahead.

“We’re not overly happy in terms of performances at this moment in time, but we are delighted that it’s balanced itself out by the points total we have got in the table,” Platt said.

“It’s balanced out by the fact that we are scoring goals. We’d like to keep clean sheets – we haven’t done that. We probably paid the penalty for not killing the game.”

“It’s not that we’re not playing well. I don’t think we are playing as well as we did at the start of last season when we were blowing teams away.

“I think there is an expectancy from ourselves and from the supporters. We are not quite up at the levels where we were at last season at this moment in time, where we were blowing teams away and keeping clean sheets.

“As I say, we can look at the video of the game and look back at its entirety , but you look at it much more positively when you have won a football match.

“Today we deserved to win the football match. And I thought we played quite well at times in terms of our movement, especially in the second half. The be-all and end-all is that we sit there with seven points out of nine and we know that we can improve.

QPR manager Mark Hughes took heart from his team’s performance, which he considered a major improvement on their struggles in the opening two matches of the league season.

“I was encouraged by what I saw today – it’s progress from what we’ve produced so far this season,” he said.

“We were in the back yard of the champions and we pressed and imposed ourselves on a very, very good team. I’m pleased with that and it’s something that we can build on.”