Manchester: Manager Pep Guardiola wants to put talk of a historic quadruple to one side as Manchester City embark upon a season-defining month.
They have eight matches in April, which begin Wednesday with a Premier League clash with struggling Cardiff at the Etihad Stadium. Victory over Cardiff will enable City to leapfrog Liverpool and go one point clear at the top as they try to retain the title.
Then attention will turn Saturday to the FA Cup semifinal with Brighton at Wembley before the first leg of their Champions League quarterfinal against Tottenham next Tuesday. The games are coming thick and fast and a single defeat could be fatal for their hopes of doing a clean sweep.
Guardiola is a keen student of the game and he recognises the enormity of what his players are trying to achieve. “From my experience why should you play for the quadruple when it has never happened in this country,” he asked in an apparent effort to reduce the pressure on his players.
“Legendary teams like Liverpool in the 1980s, Sir Alex Ferguson’s period at Manchester United, Jose Mourinho at Chelsea, Arsene Wenger with Arsenal. Nobody did it. Why should we? We can’t forget that even the team that won the treble with Ferguson – an incredible team in 1998/99 – won the league with 79 points. They won the Champions League also and the FA Cup. It was so tough. So the quadruple would be doubly tougher and we don’t want to think about it,” Guardiola added.
Guardiola knows the odds are against City winning all four trophies, given the luck required and also the quality of the opposition in the Premier League and Champions League. “The treble has only happened once in all our lives,” Guardiola pointed out. “My players can think about it but the reality is Cardiff. It’s about winning the game, recovery and then, what’s next. That is the best way,” said the Man City manager.
But Guardiola likes the idea of win or bust, and he believes that mentality has been in place since the turn of the year as they have won 19 of their last 20 matches. “The players have the conscience that they go into the game knowing that if they lose, it’s finished,” he said. “You have to win every game and that is the way I look at it,” he added.
AFP
