Sixteen points clear at the top of the Premier League, a first trophy in England and two consecutive 3-0 defeats over Arsenal in London and still Pep Guardiola is not happy.
“We need to improve,” the Manchester City manager said. “When we get back to training we are going to show the players what happened in the last 10 minutes of the first half against Arsenal and the first 20 minutes of the second half. We lost too much control, we did not know what we should do. If that happened in the Champions League we would be out. We cannot think we are perfect. You always have to have something to let the players know we are not good enough.”
Most people left the Emirates on Thursday thinking Arsène Wenger was the manager with problems but Guardiola is evidently keen to keep his players on their toes before Sunday’s home game against Chelsea. It is a meeting between defending champions and prospective ones, even if a 22-point gap in the table makes Chelsea’s runaway success last year seem a distant memory.
“Antonio Conte has already given a lot to English football and if he leaves he will be missed,” Guardiola said. “Maybe people don’t realise what he did last season. He introduced another way to attack with five at the back. A lot of teams, even Arsenal, had to do a lot of imitating to do that. Tactically Conte is a master, he did amazingly well with the national team of Italy and when he went to Turin. Then when he came to England, he did an amazing job to adapt in his first season.”
If Conte, Wenger and other leading managers are finding it hard to match City’s standards, Guardiola knows how they must feel. “Last season I had the pressure,” he said. “People were saying: ‘What is he doing, this guy? He’s coming here to play with those beliefs?’ It is happening to Arsenal now but it happened to me. I don’t understand managers criticising other managers because we are all alone. We feel good if we win and alone if the situation is not good. That is normal. That is football.”
