When Pep Guardiola begins to feel the nerves kick in at the Etihad on Wednesday night, he will know it is a good sign. This is the biggest game of the Premier League season so far but when Guardiola thinks of the uncertainty that 90 minutes will bring, he will feel his heart rate rising.
Pep Guardiola said: “I manage well but it is a good sign, being a little bit nervous. So the people in society, the teenagers, all of them are psychologists for mental health because they don’t accept that being nervous is part of our lives, being anxious is part of our lives, being scared is part of our lives, and nothing happens. We don’t have to be perfect. It happened now because I have I would say what we have to do, the uncertainty, things that happen before a game, it happens so when I feel that feeling I know it’s normal. The problem would be if I didn’t have that feeling.”
And for his players? Guardiola knows they will be feeling the pressure in the build-up as well and that they will have to find their own release to control those emotions.
Pep Guardiola said: “They have experience too, everyone has to find his own meditation to prepare himself for what they need, either with music or whatever they need to prepare for the game, but the team is ready for a big battle. At the same time, after the game, whatever happens, good or bad or whatever you say it’s just part of the game and we look to the next one, and I like to live this kind of… adrenaline, I would say would be best to define this, the adrenaline that you have. But in the end, I sleep quite well. That is not a problem.”
Guardiola will sleep a lot easier if his team have landed what could be a knockout blow on Arsenal. Having been almost faultless for so long this season, Arteta’s side have stumbled with three straight draws.
They threw away a two-goal lead in successive away games to draw with Liverpool and West Ham and then had to come from 3-1 down to salvage a point against basement side Southampton on Friday night.
That has handed the initiative to City in the title race, but for Guardiola a wounded Arsenal is a more dangerous Arsenal, a message he is transmitting to his players this week.
Pep Guardiola said: “I know how difficult it will be. Suffer in the bad moments and try to do it because always I had the feeling that it would have been so difficult to play them at this stage but after three games dropping points it will be much, much more difficult now. I would have preferred it if they had come here with better results than the three last results they didn’t win a game, so always it would be difficult but with these results it will be much more difficult.”
