NEIGHBOURS RULED FOR 20 YEARS ..NOW IT’S OUR TURN
Pep reveals he is driven by desire to launch long spell of City dominance to match the Fergie years
I don’t have all of the answers. Often, in front of the players, I will act as if I do
PEP GUARDIOLA says emulating Manchester United’s 20-year domination of English football will be his biggest challenge as a manager.
And the architect of Manchester City’s record 100point romp last season, which left the Reds trailing by 19 points as distant runnersup, wants his players to live up to their “noisy neighbours” tag – by pumping up the volume in the dressing room.
Guardiola lays bare his football philosophy in All Or Nothing: Manchester City, a fly-on-the-wall documentary released by Amazon tomorrow.
Fans enjoy access-all-areas footage, from dressing room to boardroom, from City’s historic 2017-18 campaign as Guardiola sets out to atone for the previous season – when he finished without a trophy for the only time in his coaching career.
And nothing motivates him more than the opportunity to dislodge United from their perch as the dominant force in the Premier League era, with 13 titles won between 1993 and Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement five years ago.
Guardiola admitted: “We have neighbours who, for 15 or 20 years, have always won. I think my biggest challenge as a manager is to change that.”
City’s king of keep-ball will have to wait until November to try to extend his head-tohead record over United counterpart Jose Mourinho, a personal duel he currently leads 10-5 with six draws. But where Fergie’s solution to the noisy neighbours was “to get on with your life, put the television on and turn it up a bit louder,” Guardiola is now in charge of the remote control.
He said: “I like to have a noisy dressing room before a match. I feel that animates the players more.
“What I miss from my time as a player is the locker room. It’s the nicest place to be, apart from the pitch, when there are jokes, everyone is all together, they criticise the manager and share the good and bad moments.”
Guardiola believes his unprecedented failure in 2016-17 was a matter of audacity, saying: “The