Exclusive: Pep Guardiola wants Manchester City 'restart', does not have players for Premier League title charge
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Updated 21/12/2024 at 09:38 GMT
Ahead of Manchester City's journey to Villa Park on Saturday lunchtime, a Premier League clash shown live on TNT Sports and discovery+, Pep Guardiola sat down with TNT Sports to discuss the most challenging period in his career. The Catalan manager does not believe his side can win the league title this season and urged his players to forget about their glittering past together.
‘We don’t have the players’ – Guardiola rules out title challenge, focused on short-term fix
Video credit: TNT Sports
Pep Guardiola insists Manchester City need to hit the reset button, and says he does not currently have the players to win the Premier League.
Speaking exclusively to TNT Sports ahead of City’s trip to Aston Villa on Saturday lunchtime, a clash shown live on TNT Sports and discovery+, Guardiola urged his players to forget about the titles they have won together.
After claiming six of the last seven league titles, Guardiola finds his side nine points adrift of Liverpool at the top of the table, having played a game more, with just one win in 11 matches across all competitions.
The Catalan manager was adamant that everything he has achieved to this point at City "doesn’t count" and "doesn’t help us to win games" in their current torrid run of form.
"Now it’s like we have to start, to put what we have done here on the floor and step forwards and say, it doesn’t count, it’s over," Guardiola said.
"You have to restart, you have to regain everything in our minds that everything is more difficult than ever.
"We can say how good we have been, that’s the truth, but that doesn’t help us to win games."
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In terms of results, current slump is ‘most difficult’ period of career – Guardiola
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Pressed on what made his previous incarnations of Manchester City so dominant, the 53-year-old was stumped.
"I don’t know," admitted Guardiola. "If I knew it, I would apply it right now. We came from a big success and the team was stable in terms of no injuries and the mood was good, and it happened.
"Maybe I knew it, but I forgot it. It’s just a feeling. We’ve had an incredible eight years, now we’re having more than 40 bad, bad days in terms of results.
"The reality is sometimes you lose the perspective that last season was a really good year for us."
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It was only in May that City were celebrating an unprecedented four consecutive league titles, having come from eight points behind Arsenal with a game in hand from the beginning of April.
But the gap to the summit is wider now and there is no sign of a return to fitness for key linchpin Rodri, while Ruben Dias, John Stones and Nathan Ake have all struggled with injuries this term.
So when asked whether City can claw back the deficit once again, Guardiola shook his head, but then asked, "who knows?"
"No. We don’t have the players," said Guardiola on City’s title chances. "It’s more difficult. I don’t have the feeling now. Maybe it’s going to happen, who knows?
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‘It’s over’ – Guardiola says City must forget past success and ‘restart at zero’ to regain form
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"But I have the feeling that now we have to think in the short term. We cannot put a lot of big, big targets.
"When you want to achieve something important, like win the Premier League, arrive in the latter stages of the Champions League, how you have to behave is this one concept: consistency. All this time we were incredibly consistent and now we are not."
Until November, never before had Guardiola lost five matches in a row, even after four years at Barcelona and three seasons at Bayern Munich.
But whether this is the toughest challenge of his career given the context is up for debate, with the City boss arguing that he was in a tougher position at the start of his tenures in his two previous roles.
"I don’t know. In terms of results, yeah of course. We’re not able to do it, but is the challenge the most difficult? So I don’t know if you judge the challenge in terms of results," said Guardiola.
"We have the challenge when I started at Barcelona for example, I was an unknown manager and what happened there, or after going to Munich with another language, speaking German and after the treble with Jupp Heynckes and changing the way they play.
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"It was an incredibly huge challenge for me, incredible. Now is the challenge? I would say, I won everything, we won everything. But it’s a problem. The history is there.
"But in terms of results, yeah, it’s the most difficult one, obviously."
When is Aston Villa v Man City?
Aston Villa will host Manchester City at Villa Park in the Premier League on Saturday, December 21.
Kick-off is 12:30 UK time, with live coverage on TNT Sports 1 and discovery+. Coverage starts at 11:00.
How to watch Aston Villa v Man City on TNT Sports and discovery+
TNT Sports is available across all major TV platforms, offering a line-up of up to four TV channels (TNT Sports 1, TNT Sports 2, TNT Sports 3, TNT Sports 4), and up to six digital or red-button channels (TNT Sports 5 to 10), and TNT Sports Ultimate plus TNT Sports Box Office HD.
You can subscribe to TNT Sports through discovery+, BT, EE, Sky, and Virgin Media. To find out where your local establishments showing TNT Sports are, use our Pub Finder Tool.
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