Pep Guardiola has dismissed the view that Manchester City are title favourites, stating that outside opinion of his team goes in “one ear and out the other”.
City lead Manchester United by one point with a match in hand, and have won their past 11 games. This has caused some pundits to state that City are the strongest contenders to be champions.
Yet Guardiola said: “I am not concerned with the pundits’ opinion. It is their job and I respect that a lot, but it goes in one ear and out the other. The same way that just one month ago we had no chance to win the title. The pundits are always good when we win, but not one month ago we were not even in Champions League qualification for next season and now we are the only favourites.
“In 11 months you have good and bad moments. We will have bad moments, we are going to lose games. We have won 11 games in a row – that is quite exceptional in the times we are living – but we are going to lose games and drop points.”
The manager stated that City’s reaction to setbacks would be crucial. “It is how we recover,” he said. “When people ask me what I expect for this season or tomorrow, I don’t know. My only concern is Sheffield United [on Saturday].”
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Chris Wilder’s team caused one of the season’s shocks by beating United on Wednesday and Guardiola pointed to City’s 1-0 win in the reverse fixture.
“We suffered a lot to beat them, and the year before at home they deserved to take advantage in the first half, but we won 2-0 because of brilliant actions from our quality players,” he said. “We have to discover what we can to do better than the game we won in Sheffield at the beginning of the season – we were not really good.”