Pep Guardiola believes he avoided the sack at Manchester City after five consecutive defeats and a draw because eight years of success there gave him “margin”.
City squandered a three-goal lead in Tuesday’s 3-3 draw against Feyenoord, ending their losing streak and heading to Liverpool on Sunday knowing they would be 11 points behind Arne Slot’s leaders. he was losing.
An outspoken Guardiola also claimed the club “should” sack him if he could not resolve the problems and repeated his periodic assertion that he would step down if he felt he was no longer useful.
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“In this football club you have to win and if you don’t win you will be in trouble,” the coach said. “I know people say: ‘Why isn’t Pep in trouble, why isn’t Pep sacked?’ What we’ve done over the last eight years is why I have this margin.
“The people are counting on me, the hierarchy. It’s not normal in big clubs to achieve the results we have but we have to accept it. What is certain is that I want to stay. I want to do it. But as soon as I feel that I am not positive for the club, another will come. It has to be.
“I want to have the opportunity to try. I don’t want to run. I want to be there and rebuild the team in many aspects between now and the end of the season and next season. I want to continue until then. I asked for this challenge and I asked for this opportunity to do it because I feel it. I know what we want to do, I know what we need.
Guardiola has led City to the last four Premier League titles and six in total. He has also won two FA Cups, four League Cups, the Champions League, the UEFA Super Cup and the Fifa Club World Cup. He was asked whether City president Khaldoon al-Mubarak had offered any assurances this week.
“We’ve been talking here for nine years – not every day but all the time after games and sometimes before,” he said. “He gave me his opinion, I gave my opinion, Txiki [Begiristain, sporting director] gave their opinion, the players give their opinion [too] and then we try to figure out how to move forward.
“He [Mubarak] knows perfectly well that we are not here because we are nice, and that we take these results. He knows we will find a solution and… if that doesn’t happen, the club will have to accept the solution and the decision it has to make.
Guardiola said he took the responsibility “absolutely all on my shoulders” and that he and his players had to ensure there were “no complaints, no blame, no blame”.
Guardiola is without Rodri due to a serious knee injury which is expected to rule out the midfielder until next season and his centre-backs Nathan Aké, John Stones, Rúben Dias and Manuel Akanji have also been unavailable at times. Guardiola refuses to use these absences as mitigation.
“In a decade we can’t find it [anywhere]”, he said of City’s run of success, before reflecting on the crisis. “It’s not pleasant to live with, but what do you expect? That everything is easy? It’s easy when everyone is fit and in their prime and everyone is 26, 27, 28 now I have to put on. [forward] NOW. This is no excuse for Rodri not being there. Crying all the time? That the four central defenders were not there. I have to find a solution and I try every day.