Pep Guardiola is determined to bounce back from Manchester City’s unusually disappointing season.
City are hoping to wrap up their 2024-25 campaign on a high note by clinching Champions League qualification with a positive result at Fulham on Sunday.
Due to their superior goal difference, a draw at Craven Cottage should be sufficient to secure a top-five spot in the Premier League.
Yet, after winning the title in the past four seasons, this is a relatively modest target for a club with high expectations and Guardiola wants to be back at the summit next term.
Guardiola said: “At the end, the question is not about you have failed, or you could not be good.
“It’s (about) what you have to do to be better, in the good moments, bad moments. It’s always the target – you fell down, OK, stand up again, do it again and do it again.
“The big teams are always like that. It’s how you stand up every time when the situation maybe was not perfect or ideal, and this is what we are going to have to do.”
City will review their season and plot their way forward in the coming weeks.
The immediate focus is the trip to Fulham and making sure of a return to Europe’s top club competition.
Guardiola said: “We have one game away, 95 minutes. We have to take a result to go there.
“After that, we’ll analyse the season we have done and look more carefully at what happened, what we believe is going to happen.
“Even if we don’t qualify, we’ll survive. We will move forward, we will go there, and we will take the decisions that we have to take. The club, I’m pretty sure, is thinking for the best.”
Despite knowing that merely avoiding defeat would, in all likelihood, be good enough, Guardiola admits it is not in his nature to play for a draw.
“It’s not going to happen,” he said. “If it happens because we are playing bad that game, or the opponent is much better than us – we don’t have alternative. That’s happened a few times this season.
“But it’s not for my ideas. The best thing to get the result is try to play to win the game.”
