Manchester City\u2019s players are using last season\u2019s struggles as fuel for their nine-game unbeaten streak, according to Pep Guardiola. After finishing third in the Premier League and without a trophy, the team are aiming to avoid a repeat of the worst campaign since the Spaniard\u2019s first in charge.<\/p>\n
City visit Aston Villa on Sunday seeking to extend their good form, helped by Erling Haaland\u2019s run of scoring in his past 12 appearances for club and country. \u201cThe players came to me a month ago and said: \u2018Pep we don\u2019t want to live the season like we lived last season,\u2019\u201d Guardiola said. \u201cThey are the first. They want to perform properly. They have pride.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were empty. Drained. For the success of the past, for the injuries, for many things. When you realise that life cannot always be perfect, and what you have to do to get better, we\u2019ll be a good team. We are not consistent for 95 minutes yet but in the bad moments we are quite stable and create some good moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haaland\u2019s gluttonous streak has moved him to 11 Premier League goals for the season, aided by playing the most minutes of any City player. The Norwegian has suffered from a number of injuries in recent years but Guardiola has no plans to manage his workload. He is set for a long year, with City battling on four fronts, and has helped Norway close in on qualification for next summer\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so sorry for my colleague St\u00e5le Solbakken from the national team of Norway but I\u2019m not thinking about that,\u201d Guardiola said of the idea of resting Haaland. \u201cMaybe at the end when we win the Premier League 10 points in front and 10 fixtures from the end he\u2019ll take a rest. Now he feels fit, he feels fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are games when he might look tired and he isn\u2019t going to play. We are in a position right now, Champions League is massively important, the games we\u2019ve played so far and the next two games at home will give us a really, really big chance to finish in the first eight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester City\u2019s players are using last season\u2019s struggles as fuel for their nine-game unbeaten streak, according to Pep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-252268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}