Pep Guardiola said he is unconcerned at the Manchester City players’ response to their failed title pursuit.
And the Blues boss says he is as mystified as anyone over why the top-scoring team in Europe has recently hit a brick wall in terms of sticking away its chances.
City find themselves 22 points behind Premier League leaders Liverpool with 13 games to go, after defeat at Tottenham on Sunday.
In that game they had 19 goal attempts to Spurs’ three, but still ended up losing 2-0 – with Sergio Aguero missing an open goal and Ilkay Gundogan seeing a penalty saved.
That came a week after City had become the first team in Europe’s big five leagues to score 100 goals this season.
Guardiola said he did not know why his free-scoring team has suddenly dried up, in successive games against Manchester United and Tottenham.
“I would like to find the explanation,” he said. “In every single game we have conceded less and created more - we were able to do what we did against Spurs last week.
“I don’t have any energy, any power or knowledge to say something wrong about my players. I know they want to score goals, score the penalties.
“Honestly, we have conceded few (chances) against the big clubs and we created a lot. We missed a lot of chances.
“They (the opponents) have arrived once or twice and scored – we have to improve on that, but not playing the way I want would be a problem. We can do more.
“Putting the ball in the net is the most difficult thing in football and we are going to try to improve. But we scored so many goals and now we don’t. I don’t have an explanation.
“I think we are there, we have two or three people in the box. When you play a team like Spurs they are so fast in front, you have to be careful. They’d punish a mistake.
“Apart from the penalty we created a lot of incredible chances and conceded few. It’s nice. It’s not about concern I’m just sad for my players. I suffer for them because I know they want to do it. Maybe we’ll learn from the future.”
Given that, it was inevitable that Guardiola dos not feel there is much wrong with his team, saying that he is seeing no signs – either in games or training – that the level of commitment, or confidence has dropped.
“I don’t see in the last games that the people dropped or gave up,” he said. “I don’t have that feeling. I see in the training sessions, the rhythm that we had in the past years.
“We got one point from two games against Spurs but played really well. The way I play, I like it. That day (the 2-2 draw in August), the disallowed goal, we had 20 shots and missed.”
