Pep Guardiola accepts he isn’t going to transform football in England… but says he is being changed by the way the game is played in the country.
The Spaniard arrived Manchester City in the summer amid so much fanfare, and his Manchester City team started the season just as everyone expected; blowing teams away with ease.
However, given some not so impressive displays by the Citizens in recent weeks, some serious questions were raised over whether Guardiola’s methods and style of play will work in England as well as they did at Spain's Barcelona and German giants Bayern Munich.
Guardiola said: “I’m not going to change England and I don’t want to do that. Of course, it’s going to change me.
“That’s why I came here – to be changed. That is nice.
"When I do the same thing all my career, 15 or 20 years as a coach, it’s boring. I would still be in Barcelona, my home and with these players I would be there.
''But every country has his own personality, his own way to play. And that is marvellous. That’s why football is amazing. And, of course, I come here and I said a thousand million times, I am trying to adapt to English football in the way I believe you can do that.
“But it’s 11 against 11 and the pitches here are smaller – or look like it, more than the other places. And the intensity and the aggressiveness and the permission for playing for more time with few fouls makes it a bit more difficult.
“So I understand that, I never complained and never complained in the past. It’s just we can do better to improve.”
And Guardiola admits he has made mistakes this season, adding that, when things don’t go well, his ideas are to blame, not his players.
Guardiola said: “Consistency is the only way.
"We gave in the first part of the season some really, really good games and performances.
But the moment we felt mistakes, especially in defence – an own-goal at White Hart Lane, our miss at Celtic in Glasgow – we lost a little of our confidence to play.
“And at times my ideas were not good, because I’m still getting to know the players, to know what is the best position, the best way to play, to adapt to them.
''At the beginning of the season we controlled the game through the passes. That’s what we did against West Ham and what we have to try to do. That is what I think we have to try to do, through the passes, through the multi, multi, multi-passes, the situation comes along.
''When that happens, you concede fewer goals. But when the ball is up and down, any team in the Premier League is better than us – much, much better.
“Sometimes I have an idea: three at the back or play a player in a certain way, and sometimes it didn’t work.
And, when that happens, I never complain to the players. Because I see them training, how they suffer, and what they did in the last game against Burnley after 65, 70 minutes with 10 against 11, two days after Anfield.
“You have to look at yourself and see what you have to do to help them find each other and play to each other more fluently, not all the time with an aggressiveness.
“That is my job. I have to help them and I tell them that.
“And most of the times we were not good, it was my responsibility.”
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