Guardiola ‘99.99%’ sure Man City won’t repeat treble heroics،
Pep Guardiola says he is “99.99%” sure Manchester City will not repeat last season's treble.
City are favorites to win the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup this season after winning all three trophies last year.
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They will sit top of the Premier League table – at least for a few hours – if they beat Everton on Saturday. They also have matches in the Champions League last 16 and FA Cup fifth round this month, but Guardiola has played down his side's chances of becoming the first English team to win back-to-back trebles.
“It’s a fairy tale, it’s more complicated than that,” Guardiola said at a press conference on Friday.
“Try to beat Everton and we'll see what happens. We have a 99.99% chance that we won't win the treble because never, never, never, never, ever, never, ever [anyone] it's done.
If it was easy, another team – Manchester United at the time – would do it again. It's not easy.
“Everything is so difficult in this business, what we have done in the past doesn't guarantee anything. You have to do everything again every three days to stay there until the end.
“I hope we come into March and April with the same feeling of fighting for titles in May. That's the goal.”
City were boosted by the returns of Kevin De Bruyne, Erling Haaland and John Stones and extended their winning run to nine games with the 3-1 victory over Brentford on Monday.
Everton travel to the Etihad on Saturday looking for their first away win at City since 2010, but Guardiola has told his side to be “careful”.
“It is [dangerous],” he said.
“Too much 'how good are we' or 'how good are City back'? No no, be careful, we'll see, the fact that we've won the last five games [in the Premier League] There is no guarantee that we will win the next game. We have to start again.
“From the experience we have together we know that in these stages every game is a final. Sixteen games is a lot of Premier League games, but knowing and seeing our contenders like Liverpool in particular and Arsenal but Aston Villa and Tottenham are still there, I don't. “I don't have the feeling they are going to drop many points. We have to try to keep up the pace.”
