Pep Guardiola
Pep Guardiola expects a slow start to the season for Manchester City as he blasted UEFA and FIFA for not allowing time to prepare.
Pep Guardiola said: “We will arrive like it happened last season – late, late, late because UEFA and FIFA don’t give time to managers for the calendars or players to rest. Tomorrow seven or eight players arrive. Rodri made two training sessions, [Aymeric] Laporte is isolated, many players make just two or three training sessions. We are trying to get results knowing we are not at our best, game by game, we start our best to compete every game. Mentally yes of course I am ready but how can we be ready after three or four training sessions for some players? You build relations over four or five weeks travelling together. I would love to have Eddy (Ederson) and Gabriel [Jesus] and the English players here but they finish the season three weeks ago so they have to rest. No human being can sustain. We adapt, adapt and adapt. We have done last season when we started a little bit flat in terms of results, not stable about after a while we were there and started to win and I’m pretty sure the players came back. From what I saw today, I’m incredibly confident that many good things will happen this season.”
With six players who got to the final of either the European Championship or Copa America yet to return to pre-season training with just a week to go until the opening fixture, the City manager warned that their focus will have to be on surviving the first few games of the campaign as they build up rhythm and fitness. City began poorly last season but hit their stride in spectacular fashion, winning every game they played between the middle of December and the first week of March to run away with the Premier League title. After watching his team suffer a 1-0 defeat to Leicester in the Community Shield at Wembley, Guardiola is confident of more success this season but is preparing for a bumpy start.
