Guardiola says talk of four trophies does not help City ahead of cup final
PEP GUARDIOLA’S repudiation of the idea that Manchester City might win a quadruple of trophies was spikier than ever.
‘How many times in England [does] one team wins four titles in one season?’ he demanded to know, as he prepared for today’s Carabao Cup final against Chelsea. ‘Don’t put that pressure on our shoulders, because we don’t deserve it. First for the club we are, for the history.
‘Sir Alex Ferguson’s incredible United? He never did it. Liverpool, in the Eighties, how many Champions Leagues they have in their pockets? They didn’t do it. So don’t put the pressure on one team in February. You sell something that is not true. After that [you say]: ‘They fail. Manchester City fail because they don’t win four titles. They only win three titles.’
His comparison with those other clubs betrayed the insecurity which, for all their talents, City still sometimes display in the darker moments. What they still lack is an era in which they have been able to say they were serial winners. City have not retained a trophy in 139 years. Eight trophies in the last eight years is no more than decent for a club who by last spring had spent £775m on players. Their 16 major trophies pale by comparison with Liverpool’s 43 and United’s 45.
‘Maybe for United and Liverpool it is not important,’ Guardiola said of this weekend. ‘In their cabinet of trophies, they have many titles. But it is not our case. Retaining a title will be good and playing a final will be good and always will help us grow as a club.’
He speaks of ‘the mentality of winning titles’ and winning four would convert City’s weekly feats of brilliance into a sense that they really might become insuperable.
They may never have a better chance after being drawn at Swansea in the FA Cup quarter-finals. As if the collective test of Rotherham (7-0), Burnley (5-0), and Newport County (4-1) was not benign enough in the FA Cup, the Carabao Cup has been a flat track to Wembley. What began on a delirious night for Phil Foden at Oxford United (3-0) in September, evolved with Fulham (2-0), Burton (11-0 over two legs) and the one serious obstacle in Leicester, against whom penalties were required to advance.
The Champions League terrain has also been far flatter than usual. And now come a punch-drunk Chelsea side, eviscerated 6-0 by City just 14 days ago and entering the season’s last-chance saloon at Wembley. It’s 12 years since they went into May with a shout on all four fronts before United ground out the title and Liverpool extinguished their European hopes.
The most striking aspect of City in the Carabao Cup is the way the second tier have stepped up. There was no better illustration than at Oxford when a City XI featuring 10 changes from the side that had just annihilated Cardiff played as if their lives depended on it.
The Champions League is the one the owners would sacrifice all the others for, because it brings them that global status they sought when they bought the club. It has persuaded them to commit to the second highest wage bill in Europe but despite all that outlay, City remain in the second class bracket in Europe’s elite competition. ‘If you want to be in the international elite, as a club and as a player, you need to clinch this trophy,’ Ilkay Gundogan said in a candid interview with UEFA.com last week. ‘If we were to win it someday, the club would enter a new era — the same level as Real, Barca, Bayern or Juventus. Our job is to try to give it our all to make that a reality.’
But the trophy sponsored by an energy drinks firm still carries significance, despite sounding very much like what Liverpool’s Phil Thompson once described as ‘the Mickey Mouse Cup’. City have won it three times since 2014, and a fourth would be a building block towards a sense that City are ready to step onto a higher plane.
‘For the players coming and managers in the future, they have to know how to arrive in the last stages for all the titles,’ Guardiola reflected. ‘That is what I count when I build a big, big club.