Manchester, Dec 26 Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has admitted that the club are at risk of missing out on a place in the Champions League next season.
Defending Premier League champions are enduring a testing time, slipping down the top-flight table and towards the lower end of the play-off qualification spots in the UEFA Champions League.
City are currently in their 14th consecutive season in Europe's most prestigious club competition. The only English clubs with longer streaks of qualification are Arsenal, who qualified from 1998 to 2017, and Manchester United, who did so from 1996 to 2014.
City have won just one of their last eight Premier League games and are seventh in the table, 12 points behind leaders Liverpool.
"When I said before, people laughed. They said, 'qualifying for the Champions League is not a big success'. But I know it because it happens with clubs in this country. They were dominant for many years and after they were many years not qualifying for the Champions League," Guardiola was quoted as saying by BBC.
Manchester City is the one that has been in the Champions League for the past years. Now we are at risk, of course we are. Definitely," he added.
City will host Everton on Boxing Day, before a trip to Leicester on December 29 and a home match against West Ham on January 4.
When asked whether he was worried he wouldn’t find a solution to his latest challenge, Guardiola was resolute in his response.
“No. I’m so positive in that. Of course there are doubts about if a decision is not good or we have to do this or that but I’m so positive. We make the ordinary the extraordinary in the past," the Catalan said in a pre-match presser.
“People at the beginning of the season started saying ‘City are going to win the Premier League in November’. The people think it’s ordinary to win and win when it’s something extraordinary.
“Now it’s a little bit the opposite, because it’s extraordinary to lose a lot of games. Some of them could have not happened, we played more than well enough to (take points). It happens for a reason.
“Even when we won, I didn’t take it for granted. Every situation in life, you make new experiences and know what you could have done better and what you could do better in the future," he added.
--IANS
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