Opponents no longer scared of Man City – Guardiola

If City can’t find a solution, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola claims that teams are ready to take his team on in a way that they did not before. This will cost him a Champions League spot.

Guardiola did not quite say City, who face Chelsea at home on Saturday, had completely lost their ‘ fear factor’.

However, as he assessed a miserable year, he focused on a change in strategy that suggests that opponents no longer are intimidated by teams pressing his side as much.

“Everyone came to the Etihad and stayed back”, he said. “The first team I saw man-marking was Neil Warnock at Cardiff. Everyone does it now. Everyone comes here, it doesn’t matter, man to man.

” They just jump to Ederson or Stefan]Ortega]. You have to adapt, do it better with the ball, otherwise you are not qualifying for the Champions League. “

City are currently fifth in the Premier League, one point ahead of Liverpool. After losing to Paris St-Germain this week, they now need to defeat Club Brugge on Wednesday to claim a Champions League play-off spot. They only won one game out of 13 at the end of 2024.

Guardiola does not believe that alone will solve his issues, despite City having a £123 million pool of new talent available for their Premier League game against Chelsea.

Instead of pointing out that his team hasn’t used the ball well enough, he dismissed those who use running statistics as evidence that a team is performing at its best.

” Speed is important but against PSG we ran more than them, “he said”. The ball is the source of our issue. We have missed out on this season.

“If you have the ball and don’t pass properly to your mate, everything is so difficult”.

Few would have anticipated that by the time the return meeting took place, Chelsea would be higher in the table and Guardiola’s team would be just one point ahead of Bournemouth after City won 2-0 at Stamford Bridge on the season’s opening weekend.

Given the injuries that cost him Rodri and his team-mate, who won the Ballon d’Or, and who will start with one fit central defender this weekend, aside from Vitor Reis and Abdukodir Khusanov, Guardiola thinks winning the Champions League would be like winning a trophy.

He added that Jose Mourinho’s famous claim that finishing second behind City and Manchester United in 2017-18 was one of his best achievements of his career had merit.

“There are seasons when there are a lot of difficulties”, Guardiola said. What makes you stand up? How do you stay there?