Pep Guardiola will sit down with Manchester City players at the end of the season to see which situations have become ‘unacceptable’ ahead of the transfer window. City are open to spending in other positions too – even if Sporting’s Nuno Mendes is not on their radar – but Begiristain and Guardiola will be among those to sit down with the current squad before deciding exactly what else they need.
Pep Guardiola said: “The quality of the players is there. We’ll talk at the end of the season. There are players that accept one typical situation in the team and there are other ones that don’t accept it. When they don’t accept sometimes not playing, you can sustain that for one season – a short period – but not for a long period. It’s impossible. In that position, we have to change. We’ll see at the end of the season. We’ll talk with them and we’ll be clear, they’ll be clear, and we’ll decide the best for the players. There are players that when you arrive at a level and accept it, but when you reach another level and after you drop a little bit, then you have to change. Sometimes it’s possible [to change], sometimes not. We’ll see what happens.”
Guardiola has this season reiterated the need for players to accept when they are not getting into the team, with Raheem Sterling, Aguero and Aymeric Laporte among the stars that have found themselves out of favour at different points of the season despite previously being some of the first names on the teamsheet.
Pep Guardiola said: “Every three days it’s a tough job to guys who are good quality players and they train good and they don’t play. This is the toughest moment. That is why the relationship between the players and the manager has to have a little bit of distance because you cannot have this close a relationship because you have to take the decisions that take part in their careers. Sometimes I am unfair to them but it is what it is. I don’t have another solution. That is why they are lucky to find a manager who rotates a lot, that in the last one or two months every game I have maybe changed six, seven, or eight players. I would say I have been generous with them but even with that, they don’t understand it, they want to play all the games every day – especially the important ones. It’s tough but it is what it is.”
