Pep Guardiola
Pep Guardiola advised his Manchester City players not to think about the quadruple, but admits he can’t stop them dreaming. Last week, before City beat Borussia Monchengladbach to set up a Champions League quarter-final with Borussia Dortmund, defender Aleks Zinchenko said ‘of course’ the Blues could win all four trophies on offer this season. Guardiola immediately disagreed, urging caution, and was asked ahead of the Everton cup tie whether he had chance to talk to his players about thinking too far ahead of the next game.
Pep Guardiola said: “With this period for the Covid I don’t talk to players. We see on the pitch, training, before games but I don’t talk much. The dreams are dreams, they can think of that it’s okay. My advice is not do it, it’s Everton. Today unfortunately, I have to speak about Dortmund because I know the draw was a few hours ago in a nice competition but my only concern is to analyse and talk about Dortmund a little but right after train about Everton. If they want to think about it, it’s good, it’s simple, if they want to think about trophies they have to win tomorrow. After they can think about trophies, to win tomorrow they have to be focussed tomorrow. Never since I’ve been here have I travelled to Everton away and thought [it would be easy], I realise when I lost 4-0 [in 2017] it is always a struggle to win. The last game [at Everton] was 1-1 at half time, we scored because of incredible actions by Riyad and Bernardo. Tomorrow is not an exception, it will be an incredibly tough game. Hopefully we can find resources to beat them.”
Guardiola also revealed that he will give his players some time off over the upcoming international break if they haven’t been selected for their countries. The likes of Sergio Aguero, Gabriel Jesus, Fernandinho, Nathan Ake, Benjamin Mendy and Aymeric Laporte will all remain at City while their teammates jet off around Europe.
Pep Guardiola said: “They will have a few days off after Goodison Park and afterwards train for three or four days. We’ll have four or five from the academy with the bubble. Ten players will train again two or three days more and after two or three days off. It will be a mix. Before we had one week off, now we train a bit in between and we will wait. We will be all together the next Friday, the day before Leicester then we start to prepare for Leicester, Dortmund, Leeds, Dortmund, Aston Villa, a potential semi final in the FA Cup. That’s what we will do.”
