Pep Guardiola has discussed the mentality of Manchester City’s fanbase in comparison to former clubs Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
City’s fanbase has long had an association with pessimism, a narrative created during the club’s barren run without silverware prior to Sheik Mansour’s billionaire takeover at the club.
The possibility for it all to go wrong has long haunted the supporters, despite City emerging as England’s dominant force across the past decade.
Guardiola’s side are nine points clear at the top of the Premier League at present and ahead of this weekend’s clash with Norwich discussed the ‘typical City’ mentality in comparison to his former sides.
The Spaniard believes the mentality remains at City, but that it is now used as a positive to fuel the club’s push for further honours.
“I was born in Barca, grew up in their academy. They taught me everything and the best way is that everything can go wrong, the warnings to have as an individual or as a team you can go down and lose,” he said at his pre-match press conference.
“That’s the best way to approach. We’ve had an incredible run of one draw in 14 games and are in the hat for the (FA Cup) draw – fantastic.
“But Liverpool are still there around the corner, and that’s the mentality. Our team has shown we’re not scared to face every game with positivity, but knowing we can drop points.
“This is the way to behave when you lose a game. Against Brentford, one pass, Kevin De Bruyne went 40 metres back to help out John Stones at right-back. When it happens, you can’t ask more when they’ve won what they won.”
Guardiola insisted the title race is far from over despite his side’s comfortable advantage, with the City boss believing it will take a points haul in excess of 90 to be crowned as champions once again.
“Nobody wins always but we have to win, fight to win the Premier League, have to win an incredible amount of points against these opponents,” he said.
“The margin to Liverpool is nothing. We have to win a lot of games, more than 90 points, 95 or 96 to be champions, I’m pretty sure. It’s the way you lose, many times we lost as a great team, it’s the way you lose.”
