On the eve of a Carabao Cup final meeting with Arsenal, Pep Guardiola dismissed suggestions that his rivals were mounting a realistic quadruple challenge. Asked how hard it is to assemble four trophies in a season, Guardiola cut across the premise and drew attention back to his own side.<\/p>\n
When a reporter noted Arsenal had won a treble and therefore come close, Guardiola replied: “I mean, you\u2019ve won a treble,” and, after a pause, added: “And quadruple as well.” He went on to explain he was referring to the 2018\u201319 campaign when Manchester City collected four domestic trophies: the Premier League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup and Community Shield. “I know it\u2019s not as prestigious, like you pretend,” he sniffed with a shrug of his shoulders, “but we did it.”<\/p>\n
That remark underlined a recurring point for Guardiola: the status of the Community Shield. He has long expressed frustration at how that one-off season opener is viewed. As he has said in the past: “When Manchester City win the Community Shield, it\u2019s not a title,” he once seethed. “When another team wins the Community Shield, it\u2019s a title.”<\/p>\n
Guardiola\u2019s comments arrived shortly after City\u2019s hopes of sweeping all competitions were ended by Real Madrid in the Champions League round of 16 this season. He also reflected on his relationship with Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, a former assistant at City, and how distance has changed their dynamic. “I don\u2019t have time to go to London, and I don\u2019t think he has time to come to Manchester,” Guardiola admitted. “When we were here [at City] we saw each other five or six hours every day, so the relationship is completely different after his five or six years in London.”<\/p>\n
The intervention was measured and pointed: Guardiola would not entertain hype about a rival quadruple while emphasising a past season in which City secured four domestic trophies and pressing his case over how those honours are categorised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola dismissed quadruple talk and pointed to City’s 2018-19 haul of four domestic trophies….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1067,238],"tags":[1066,1047],"class_list":["post-9173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-carabao-cup","category-manchester-city","tag-carabao-cup","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9173","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=9173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}