The ManicaPost
PEP Guardiola thinks Manchester City faces a difficult task to qualify for the Champions League and insists he is not thinking about a possible title win.City has won 10 consecutive matches in all competitions to start the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss’ reign at the Etihad Stadium in style.
Arsenal shows title credentials
Six of those victories have come in the Premier League – the most recent being Saturday’s 3-1 win at Swansea City – but Guardiola is refusing to get carried away, with even a top-four finish something he will not take for granted.
“I didn’t think about what might happen at the start of the season,” he told the club’s website.
“We just focused on pre-season and then we took a lot of confidence from our Champions League qualifying games and then it’s been game-by-game. I honestly just think qualifying for the Champions League will be very tough. United played really well (against Leicester City), Liverpool are especially playing very well, as are Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal. Everton may have lost, but they are all so, so strong.
“Now we are thinking of Celtic and then it will be Tottenham and that’s how we’ll go forward. At the end of the season, we’ll see how our levels were and whether we were better than our rivals or not.”
Guardiola felt City’s creative play was far from perfect in the triumph over Swansea, with the match level at 1-1 until his side struck twice in the final 25 minutes.
He added: “We didn’t create a lot of clear chances – we created a lot of ‘almost’ chances, but our final pass was not good enough. We arrived many, many times with Kevin De Bruyne, David Silva and Ilkay Gundogan.
“It was amazing that we were in that situation so often, but didn’t make the final pass, but then we got the penalty and then a third goal so we were able to win.”
City sits four points clear at the summit, with next top-flight opponent Tottenham the nearest challenger. – Goal.com.
