CARABAO CUP FINAL: CITY V CHELSEA

PEP Guardiola wants his City team to develop the same ‘starving’ mentality he developed at Barcelona.

The Blues boss takes his team to the Carabao Cup final at Wembley today knowing a victory over Chelsea would set down another marker in the history of the club.

It would be the first time City have retained any major trophy, having won it last season to hand Guardiola his first silverware since taking charge at the Etihad Stadium.

And the Blues boss said he wants that mind-set – the need to win, win and win again – to infuse the club from top to bottom.

City have shown their character many times this season and the midweek win at Schalke, when they came from 2-1 down while reduced to ten men, was another sign that they are heading in the direction Guardiola wants.

But the manager says it is harder to instil such values at City, who do not have the long history of achievement which demands it from the start.

“In the case of Barcelona and Bayern Munich, the question of mentality to win titles was already there in their history,” he said. “You don’t have to do something special. People always say, ‘What character Manchester City have to be 2-1 down and recover and make it 2-3, what a personality.’

“I don’t know the relationship between character and Leroy (Sane) shooting a free-kick from 40 metres and putting the ball in the net. It’s difficult for me to evaluate that, but that’s true.

“So you’re in that position, especially at half-time, when we played the first minutes of the second half, we didn’t say, ‘Oh, 2-1, be careful.’ We tried to score another goal and another goal. “We always do. So when we were at 2-1 in Monaco (two years ago) in the second half and were going through, we continued to play and play. “Maybe it was a mistake and we should have defended more and not conceded for 3-1 and we would have gone through. But the way we believe the best way to play is to look for another goal. It’s the best way to defend and we did it.” Guardiola said Johan Cruyff helped to steep Barcelona in that winning mind-set, as well as revolutionising the way they looked at tactics and youth development. “Johan Cruyff helped us a lot to win,” he said. “In the academy in Pep Guardiola