'We’re at risk of missing out on Champions League': Pep Guardiola

Pep Guardiola

Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has admitted that the club are at risk of missing out on a place in the Champions League next year. The 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 nine Premier League games and are seventh in the table, 11 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. Guardiola was critical of those who had prematurely handed the title to City at the start of the season, while also accepting his team had dropped points from winning positions.

"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)," he said.

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