Pep will not change ways
away but he knows how serious it is.
“No one more than him wants to play and score goals but he also knows how important the headguard is.
Family
“It’s not just for him, it’s for his wife, his children, his family.
“He has a life outside of football. He knows he needs to take care of himself.”
Wolves go to St Mary’s desperate to get just their second win of a so far disappointing season.
Lage is an advocate of attractive, attacking football but admits he would take three points any which way they came right now.
He added: “If we played badly and only created one chance and won the game with it, then everyone goes for that.”
“We have the experience, the positive experiences and we know how tough it feels at half time in the dressing room, how much work we put in, the kind of input which is needed.
“When I tell you 50- 50, I mean 50-50.
“Honestly the last three games, I see three 50- 50 matches… it could have been any outcome.
“This is tough enough. “It’s one of the biggest tests in European football, the game is on tomorrow, it’s in our stadium and we feel ready.”
P
W D L F A Pts
Chelsea 5 4 1 0 12 1 13 Liverpool 5 4 1 0 12 1 13 Man Utd 5 4 1 0 13 4 13 Brighton 5 4 0 1 7 4 12 Man City 5 3 1 1 11 1 10 Everton 5 3 1 1 10 7 10 Tottenham 5 302 3 6 9 West Ham 5 2 2 1 11 7 8 Brentford 5 221 5 2 8 Aston Villa 5 2 1 2 8 77 Watford 5 203 6 8 6 Leicester 5 203 5 8 6 Arsenal 5 2 0 329 Crystal 6 Palace 5 1 2 2 58 5 Southampton 5 0 41 4 6 4 Wolves 5 1 0 4 2 53 Leeds 5 0 32 5 12 3 Newcastle 5 0 2 3 6 13 2 Burnley 5 014 3 9 1 Norwich 5 0 0 5 2 14 0
MANCHESTER CITY boss Pep Guardiola insists title rival
Thomas Tuchel has not got into his head.
Guardiola has lost all three of his clashes with Tuchel since the German took charge of Chelsea last season, including the Champions League final.
Tuchel also got the better of Guardiola in the Premier League and FA Cup semi-final.
The two giants clash again this lunchtime at Stamford Bridge, when Guardiola will look to end his hoodoo ahead of a huge week that also sees City face
Paris St- Germain in the Champions League and then Liverpool.
But despite his woeful record against Tuchel, Guardiola reckons it does not bother him and that facing the Blues is no more special than taking on anyone else.
Prepare
He said: “We will prepare like we prepared for Southampton and before the previous games.
“We try to read what they are and what we’ve done in recent games with Tuchel in charge of them. We try to have a new challenge, to learn and do it better.
“It’s not a final. In the FA Cup it was a semifinal, in the Premier League we were almost champs and the Champions League was a massive game.
“But now this is a new competition and one more game towards the Premier League. We do what we have to do to be better.
“This is the mindset and it will be the same for PSG and Liverpool before the international break.”
Defeat
Guardiola admits he watched a rerun of the Champions League final defeat in Porto a few weeks later but has no regrets about his tactics or team selection.
He said: “I lived it with calm and after that a mix of disappointment and sadness, because we could not achieve it.
“But I was incredibly proud with what we did that season. We had courage.
“Maybe we were not brilliant in the final third, so we could not find the spaces that we believed we could to punish them but that’s football, it happens.
“When you play 13 games in a tournament and win 11 and draw one and lose the final it’s because it was exceptional. I would like the players to feel how nice it was.
“For this club getting to the final was a massive success, it was a privilege to live that.
The decisions were made in the moment, so I have no regrets.”