Pep Guardiola has issued a clear message to Premier League leaders Arsenal, saying Manchester City have left the problems that derailed last season behind and that the turnaround is down to a change in energy rather than tactical tinkering.<\/p>\n
City endured a damaging run last term, winning just a single Premier League game in a nine-match stretch from Nov. 2 to Dec. 26 and suffering six defeats. That sequence ended their bid for an unprecedented fifth consecutive title and they finished 13 points behind champions Liverpool.<\/p>\n
This season City have reasserted themselves. They sit two points behind Arsenal after winning their last six Premier League matches, a run of eight consecutive victories across all competitions that has yielded 33 points from the last 39 available. Since the 1-1 draw with Arsenal in September, Guardiola noted the Gunners have dropped seven points more than City over the same period.<\/p>\n
Guardiola rejected tactical explanations for the collapse and recovery, putting the emphasis on restoring a collective spark. \u201cEnergy, energy, energy,\u201d he said this week. \u201cMe first,\u201d he added, including himself equally as accountable for that shortfall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lost it last season. We started to train better, to compete better [since then]. After that we can talk about three at the back, four at the back, wingers or fullbacks\u2014that is all bull—-. We needed to get energy back, and then you have a good environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described an atmosphere that needed time to clear. \u201cSomething was in the fog in Manchester, surrounding our training centre,\u201d Pep continued. \u201cWe missed something. It is not switching [energy] on or off. Managers are not magicians, clicking fingers and everything is clear. Sometimes you need time. Winning helps to advance this process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola also credited a collective effort off the pitch, saying a series of dinners and conversations, involving coaches Pep Lijnders and James French, personal adviser and confidant Manuel Estiarte as well as current and past sporting directors Hugo Viana and Txiki Begiristain, helped reset the group. \u201cWe turned around and said something changed. Something [you can feel],\u201d Guardiola teased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola says Manchester City recovered from last season’s dip by regaining energy and unity. 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,238,172],"tags":[1162,1307],"class_list":["post-5479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}