Sport

Pep Guardiola challenges the Spurs European record.

Published

8 months ago

January 25, 2024

Pep Guardiola has won everything there is to win at Manchester City, but there is one thing the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich manager is yet to do.

Pep Guardiola admits Manchester City’s shambolic record at Tottenham has left him baffled.

The English champions have lost all five of their previous visits to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium – and have failed to score a single goal in the process. Former Spurs bosses Mauricio Pochettino, Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo and Antonio Conte have all inflicted defeats on Guardiola’s side in North London.

Guardiola will hope to overcome his hoodoo when City travel to Spurs again on Friday for what promises to be the most explosive tie of the FA Cup fourth round. But the Spaniard admits he cannot explain why his Treble winners have fared so badly there.

He said: “It happened at White Hart Lane, not just in this stadium. But they’re an exceptional side. Ever since Mauricio was manager – and under all the other managers, too.

“They also have exceptional players. Always you think ‘why are they not able to be there in the last stages, in the Champions League?’ They were there a few years ago, but I’ve been in the Champions League for many years. Tottenham is a fantastic, historical club, the players are really good.

“When I analyse the performance, what we create and concede, it’s the same as what happened in the home game here. We played well – but we were not able to win. It’s happened many times, but hopefully we can break it.”

City are expected to have to cope without superstar striker Erling Haaland once again. Haaland has returned to full training and is pain free, following a broken bone in his foot.

Haaland could be included in the squad, but Guardiola is not expected to involve the Norwegian scoring machine. He added: “It was a little bit of a fracture of the bone, and the bone is not a muscular issue that you can do a little bit of work on and come back.

“When you have this injury, it’s a question of time, it’s six to eight weeks. The bone needs time to close, to make his procedure and now it’s at the end, it will be eight weeks now, almost two months this or next weekend, in the process.

“He feels good and now he needs time to take the rhythm and start to give him minutes when he will be fit. When he came back after two or three sessions and felt some disturbance, that’s why we were a little cautious after we waited a long time.

“Now he feels good, we’ll give him three or four days and hopefully next week against Burnley he can play his first minutes.”

MANCHESTER CITY (4-2-3-1): Ederson; Walker, Stones, Dias, Ake; Kovacic, Rodri; Silva, De Bruyne, Foden; Alvarez.