Pep Guardiola says Manchester City’s poor run must be put into context as he prepares for another tough trip to Aston Villa.
Guardiola has guided City to the last four Premier League titles and six of the last seven.
This season, however, has seen a run of one win in 11 games as City have dropped to fifth in the table, below Nottingham Forest and two points ahead of Villa.
Guardiola said: “I handle the good times, I handle the bad times. I have bad ones in my coaching career but we were able to come back and now it takes more time.
“I have experience with this. I had 40 days of bad days in terms of results, that’s the truth when you compare to eight years that are much better. It’s been eight years of incredible (results) and now we have 40-45 days (bad results).
PEP 💬 Manuel (Akanji) and John (Stones) are back in training. This is good for us…
I don’t know yet (if they will start on Saturday). Yesterday was their first training session. pic.twitter.com/nRdNHj134D
— Manchester City (@ManCity) December 20, 2024
“I’m fine. I am a normal person with feelings like all of us. When a situation is going well, we’re better and when it’s not going well professionally, we’re more (focused) on what we need to do.”
Villa finished fourth last season and have juggled another top-four challenge with an impressive Champions League campaign that saw wins over Bayern Munich and RB Leipzig.
Guardiola says their success under Unai Emery was no surprise.
“I’m not surprised,” he said. “Top, excellent manager. (They had good success) qualifying for the Champions League and the results in the Champions League speak for themselves.
“They handle it well because when I’ve been at a lot of clubs that handle both competitions, they’ve done really well.”
