Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has blamed himself for his team’s poor form until the end of 2024.
The reigning Premier League champions have suffered dramatic relegation from the elite division in each of the last four seasons. It took nerve, an unconvincing 2-0 victory over relegated Leicester City to end a two-month wait for an away win.
Even after the goals of Savinha and Erling Haaland at the King Power Stadium, City have won just two of their previous 14 games in all competitions heading into Saturday’s Premier League clash with West Ham United outside the top five.
When reflecting on the worst run of form during his illustrious managerial career, Guardiola had himself to blame. “The first call is on me,” he told the assembled media on Friday. “I’m incredibly honest with myself about why we came here, which is me. It’s not the players. They naturally fall a little bit and that’s normal. A little bit of that happened last season as well.
“But with this consistency [of results] I should have found him and that is why we are in this position. I’m to blame [myself]. It doesn’t mean to say, ‘Oh how good Pep is’, that’s the truth. I lead that group of players and I couldn’t raise them. This is reality.”
The manager, who signed a two-year contract extension after four consecutive defeats in November, he continued: “Why have they followed me in the past, managed to get results? We were the only unbeaten team in Europe and at the top of the league. We went down immediately. In terms of injuries, a lot of things we talked about about it, but even with that, I should have found a way to get better results.”
Guardiola has spent much of City’s losing streak stressing that the team played well in stoppage time only to be undone by misfortune. However, the manager admitted that it was his side had a triumph of green in a narrow victory over Leicester.
“We have to recover our game because we were lucky in Leicester,” he said. “The spirit and the drive and the desire of course, but I know what level we are at because I have seen it here before my eyes for many, many years and I will not deny myself, the players will not deny themselves the reality.
“That’s football, sometimes you know you need a change and something in your mind to recover some aspects and lift the team. That’s what I need now and that’s why the win at Leicester was really, really important. I’m not denying that.”
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