DERBY DAY IS NOTHING SPECIAL FOR PEP
PEP GUARDIOLA says the Manchester derby is just another ordinary game.
Manchester City travel to Old Trafford to face neighbours United today for what promises to be a powder keg clash.
City know that a win would maintain their title challenge, as well as pile the pressure back on under-fire United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
But Guardiola has cut through the emotion surrounding one of the biggest fixtures of the season by insisting he isn’t caught up in all the hype.
When asked if he thought the
by JEREMY CROSS clash was special, Guardiola said: “I don’t feel it.
“I wake up and come here to the bubble in this training centre and I’m 12 or 14 hours here. Then I go home.
“I don’t go to restaurants or pubs. I can imagine how important it is for both sides but I have to be cool in my mind and head, to know what we have to do, to do our best, no more than that.
“Maybe for some people, of course it’s special, for the city, for many issues. But at the end it’s the same result, it’s not like a semi-final or final.” Guardiola, meanwhile, has highlighted the threat of Cristiano Ronaldo heading into the showdown.
City tried to sign Ronaldo in the summer and were left stunned when United hijacked the deal to take the Portuguese icon back to Old Trafford.
The Spaniard said: “They have a lot of physicality, people with the ability to win games up front and good runners in behind. They always have quality.
“They’re so good up front and now and with Cristiano
Ronaldo, they are even better.” Guardiola insisted City cannot go to Old Trafford and stage a repeat of Liverpool’s emphatic 5-0 win there a fortnight ago.
He believes rival Solskjaer and his players have learned from the debacle and will be better prepared to avoid another thrashing.
He added: “We cannot play like Liverpool play, because we have different players and different ways to play.
“If you look, in the last four, five or six years in the Premier League, at the games played by Liverpool and City, you will know we play differently. We’re going to try and play our game as a team, but we have different qualities.
“Maybe right now, if United played Liverpool, they would play in a different way and it wouldn’t be the result they got at Old Trafford, because everyone learns from it.
“Every manager learns from what works or didn’t work and what you have to do to fix it. Football is not copy and paste.
“After that defeat to Liverpool, United changed the set-up against Tottenham and it worked.”