Pep Guardiola believes he has avoided the sack at Manchester City after five consecutive losses and a draw because eight years of success there have given him a “margin”.
City threw away a three-goal lead in Tuesday’s 3-3 draw with Feyenoord when ending their run of defeats and travel to Liverpool on Sunday knowing they will trail Arne Slot’s leaders by 11 points if they lose.
A candid Guardiola also claimed the club would “have to” dismiss him if he cannot solve the problems and repeated his periodically stated claim that he will walk away if he feels he is no longer of benefit.
“At this football club you have to win and if you don’t win, you will be in trouble,” the manager said. “I know people say: ‘Why is Pep not in trouble, why is Pep not sacked?’ What we have done the last eight years is why I have this margin.
“The people rely on me, the hierarchy. It is not normal in the big clubs to do the results we have but we have to accept it. What’s for sure I want to stay. I want to do it. But the moment I feel I am not positive for the club another one will come. It has to be.
“I want the opportunity to try. I don’t want to run. I want to be there and rebuild the team in many aspects from now on until the end of the season and next season. I want to continue up to then. I asked for that 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 past four Premier League titles and six in total. He has also claimed two FA Cups, four League Cups, a Champions League, a Uefa Super Cup and a Fifa Club World Cup. He was asked whether City’s chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, had offered assurances this week.
“We talk for nine years here – not every day but after the games all the time and before sometimes,” he said. “He gave me his opinion, I gave my opinion, Txiki [Begiristain, sporting director] gave his opinion, the players give their opinion [too] and afterwards we try to figure out how to move forward.
“He [Mubarak] knows perfectly that we are not here because we are nice, and that we take these results. He knows that we are going to find a solution and … if that doesn’t happen, the club will have to take the solution and the decision they have to take.”
Guardiola said he took responsibility “absolutely all on my shoulders” and that he and his players needed to ensure there was “no complaining, no blaming, no pointing”.
Guardiola is without Rodri because of a serious knee injury expected to sideline the midfielder until next season, while the frontline centre-backs Nathan Aké, John Stones, Rúben Dias and Manuel Akanji have also at times been unavailable. Guardiola refused to use these absences as mitigation.
“In a decade we don’t find it [anywhere],” he said of City’s run of success, before reflecting on the slump. “It’s not nice to live, 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, no. I have to put myself [forward] now. It’s not an excuse that Rodri is not there. Cry all the time? That the four central defenders have not been there. I have to find a solution and I’m trying every day.”
