Manchester City aiming to end season with quadruple, insists Pep Guardiola
Even though City face the prospect of a fixture backlog as they attempt to catch Liverpool, Guardiola is unfazed, arguing that the more trophies his team are chasing, the happier he is
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Your support makes all the difference.Pep Guardiola has declared that he would never abandon a cup competition to ease fixture congestion as Manchester City continue to chase an unprecedented quadruple.
City’s Premier League title rivals Liverpool have only two trophies to compete for after an under-strength side were knocked out of the FA Cup at Wolves on Monday night.
It means that Jurgen Klopp’s league leaders, who are still in the Champions League, are set to enjoy a lighter schedule over the second half of the season as they seek to bring the English title to Anfield for the first time since 1990.
Yet even though City face the prospect of a fixture backlog as they attempt to catch Liverpool, Guardiola is unfazed, arguing that the more trophies his team are chasing, the happier he is.
He is confident that his team have the squad to cope with pursuing trophies while trying to keep pace with Liverpool.
Guardiola said: “If everyone is fit and not injured, we can cope with it. The problem is if you have 10 injured players, it’s almost impossible. When everyone is fit, it’s better.”
City could end up playing as many as 65 matches this season if they were to reach the finals of the Champions League, the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup – a total just five short of the all-time English record for a single campaign, set by the Arsenal team of 1979-80.
Guardiola will attempt to move a step closer to securing a trophy on Wednesday as League One side Burton visit the Etihad Stadium in the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final.
He has managed to juggle his team selection during a busy period, making eight changes for Sunday’s 7-0 FA Cup third-round win over Rotherham, a fixture that came just three days after Cty had beaten Liverpool in the Premier League.
He said: “I like to be in the four competitions as far as possible. When Wigan put us out of the FA Cup last season, I was sad.
“I take the cups seriously. Against Rotherham, for example, we played with eight players who didn’t play against Liverpool and the eight were a good selection.”
No team in English history has won the four major prizes in domestic football – Premier League, the Champions League, the FA Cup and Carabao Cup – under any of their guises in a single season.
Guardiola is prepared to try to become the first manager to do that, although he acknowledged that Liverpool may have had good reasons for deciding not to push too hard for the FA Cup.
He said: “I’m not involved in what my opponents do. The reality for Jurgen is that he knows exactly what happened [at Wolves].
“Sometimes it happens when you have many problems. Maybe I would take a decision to play with some others [in those circumstances].
“I’m not the right person to judge what the others do because I don’t like it when others judge our decisions.”
City, meanwhile, are in discussions to extend club captain Vincent Kompany’s contract, which expires at the end of this season.
Kompany, 32, joined City from Hamburg in August 2008, and is likely to get a one-year deal.
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