Pep Guardiola says Manchester City are set up for more success after a dominant decade "fighting with huge elephants" in the Premier League.
The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss has contributed to what he believes has been the best team in England over the last ten years, winning two league titles and claiming an unprecedented domestic treble to boost their trophy haul.
Despite trailing Liverpool by 14 points heading into the second half of this campaign, the City manager is confident that this team is capable of winning more titles and put the points gap down to "issues that we cannot control" - chiefly injuries to key players (which he did say on Tuesday) and decisions that have gone against the team (which he didn't).
Guardiola added that his team will pray for a repeat of last season where they overhauled a deficit to pip Liverpool but they are already planning for next season and beyond as they look to remain the biggest animals in the football jungle.
"We cannot control what a fantastic team like Liverpool have done so far and there are other issues you cannot control but when everyone is fit we can do it," said the manager.
“We are talking and we know exactly more or less what we have to do next season.
“I think this in the last decade was the best team in terms of points, in terms of goals, in terms of everything, titles even. So congratulate Manchester City for that.
"When we analyse every single day here, what happened day-by-day gives us perspective in what happened in the last 10 seasons, especially when people from Abu Dhabi took over the club and bought good players, interesting managers and bigger stuff.
"We did it incredibly well. People say ‘how was 2019?’ Now people are saying it is a disaster. We won four titles in 2019, so it was an incredible year for us, we enjoyed it a lot. In some games in this last part of the year we have struggled a bit but it was an incredible year for us. Congratulations for all the people working here. They were fighting with huge elephants here in England, big big clubs with the biggest history. For the past decade we were part of them. That is amazing.
"The big clubs here in England are always looking forward, we are going to try and analyse not just in terms of the squad but as a club how we can do better. Hopefully in the next decade this club can be here for more time."
