PEP GUARDIOLA SAYS his Manchester City team are lacking ‘credentials’ – but not tackles – and has backed himself to defy Stan Collymore and enjoy success in the Premier League.
City are seven points behind leaders Chelsea having lost their last two matches, the most recent of which was a 4-2 defeat at Leicester City which sparked criticism of Guardiola’s style and apparent refusal to change his methods.
Guardiola rejected the suggestion that his side’s lack of first-half tackles contributed to the result on Saturday, although ex-footballer Collymore, among others, has insisted the Catalan will fail in England if he does not embrace its rough-and-tumble nature.
The City boss is going through the most fallow period of his managerial career to date, but he insists he is a “fighter” who is used to criticism from his time at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, and that he is working to correct his side’s “many” issues.
Asked if he has doubted himself at times in recent weeks, he responded: “Of course, when we lose I think, ‘What do we have to do? What do we have to do? What do we have to do?’”
“Yeah, of course, but I believe a lot what I did in the past and I know we can do it here. If not, if we didn’t feel that, I would not have come here, knowing, because I came here and I played against English teams many times, like Chelsea, Arsenal, United and when I came here I realised the way I would like to play and how difficult it is to compete with them, so I knew that.
“That is why I came here, like a challenge, to prove to myself I am able. If I am not able, I will say ‘Stan Collymore, I [go] back to Catalunya’, and I say all the best for Manchester City.
“For some people it is a disaster, a failure, but okay it’s part of the game, sometimes it happens, okay, but at the end of the day I achieved what I achieved especially because I am a fighter, so I like these kind of things. I started at Barcelona when we didn’t win in the first matches, and the people criticise me, you can’t imagine how they were there in Barcelona when I started and I didn’t win. And in Bayern Munich when I didn’t win the Champions League. They expected to win the Champions League, but we arrived in the semi-finals but no more, so I knew that.
“I didn’t expect the English media to be sweet with me when I didn’t win, so with the results in the last month and a half I didn’t expect that. We are not going well, we didn’t win at home and away – it was better but we lost the last game – so I have to accept that, it’s happened. I have enough energy to fight them and if it doesn’t go well, I say, ‘Sorry guys, I was not able’ and another guy [manager] is coming here. But I have been here six months so I still have time.
“Maybe people forget that we did well in the first part of the season. It is about many things. It is not about the tackles. It is about our credentials as a team. We have to recover that as soon as possible and we are going to try.”
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