Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has admitted that his team’s performance this season has been “really poor.”
Despite being Premier League champions for the last four seasons, City currently sit fifth in the table, 22 points behind leaders Liverpool with just nine matches remaining. Guardiola, who has led City to six Premier League titles since joining in 2016, has never finished a season lower than third with any club in his managerial career.
When asked to assess his own performance as manager this term, Guardiola, 54, candidly stated, “This season? Really poor.”
“The opponents never gave us a red carpet to win the titles that we won in the past,” he continued. “My duty was to overcome the situation much better than I have done [this season].”
Guardiola attributed the team’s struggles to “a few details” and expressed hope that such issues would not recur next season. “Hopefully this will not happen next season. This is important,” he added.
City are aiming to reach the FA Cup semi-finals for a seventh consecutive season when they face Bournemouth in the quarter-finals on Sunday at the Vitality Stadium.
However, Guardiola stressed that even winning the FA Cup and securing a Champions League spot by finishing in the top four would not compensate for their failed Premier League title defense.
“Of course, it would be nice to arrive in the final of the FA Cup and win it, and qualify for the Champions League,” Guardiola said. “That would be a big success, but the season has been poor and it’s not going to change.”
He went on to say, “Our standards and many things were not good, this is the reality. That’s not going to change for the fact we win one title or qualify for the Champions League. We’ll be happy, of course. We want to do it, but the season has not been good.”