Pep Guardiola says Man City “have improved a lot” since losing at Tottenham and drawing at Celtic before the international break and the new boss is adamant he will not change his principles.
Guardiola may be thankful for his former Barcelona team-mate’s kind words but he would much rather have been toasting a return to winning ways on Saturday evening.
Having been held 3-3 by Celtic in the Champions League and well beaten by Tottenham before the international break, City are now three games without a win after starting the campaign __with 10 on the trot.
Guardiola accepted his team were riding a tricky patch – not an ideal situation heading into a midweek Champions League assignment against his former side Barca.
But he has no intention of compromising his principles on the back of three winless matches.
“I’m sorry, never in my life am I going to change the way I want to play football,” he said.
“It’s the only way I have. I can make mistakes, be judged for many things, but I have only one power: my teams play the way I want.
“There are storms, problems, but what is nice is to improve on that. We’ve improved a lot on what happened in Glasgow and Tottenham.
“We created enough chances to win the game, they had one chance. One situation. Sometimes football is beautiful for that reason and sometimes you play bad and win games.”
On his side’s wastefulness from 12 yards, Guardiola confirmed his side do not work on spot-kicks in training.
“No. I don’t have time to practice everything I want to practice,” he said.
“I’m not going to talk or discuss the quality of Kevin or Sergio to kick penalties. You can practice in training sessions, but nobody is there, no pressure.”