Pep Guardiola bemoans Manchester City's Premier League struggles after dramatic late win over Aston Villa - 'The season has been bad'
Updated 23/04/2025 at 00:00 GMT+1
Manchester City beat Aston Villa 2-1 on Tuesday night to climb to third in the Premier League table and take a big stride towards securing UEFA Champions League football for next season. Pep Guardiola praised his side's performance, but maintained that their 2024/25 season has been a "bad" one. City are still in the FA Cup semi-finals and will compete at the FIFA Club World Cup in June.
Guardiola on Man City’s ‘important’ win over Villa as race for UCL heats up
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Pep Guardiola said Manchester City have endured a "bad" season, despite a late win over Aston Villa that saw them climb to third in the Premier League standings.
Matheus Nunes met Jeremy Doku's cross at the back post in the 94th minute to seal a dramatic 2-1 victory, after Marcus Rashford's first-half penalty had cancelled out Bernardo Silva's early opener.
Guardiola celebrated wildly as his side secured a vital win in the race for UEFA Champions League football, but he conceded the season was still a disappointing one.
"The season has been bad, not good," he told Sky Sports. "It doesn’t matter if we reach the FA Cup final or qualify for the Champions League.
"The reality is what makes you feel the season is good is the Premier League, not the Champions League, not the FA Cup, the consistency in the Premier League, and we have not been, but it happens.
"The level of Premier League teams is outstanding. Since the Bournemouth game in the FA Cup, the team changed. Against Man United and Everton we didn’t play good but we fought, we tried to win duels.
"That is the principle and this season we did not have that energy for many reasons, a lesson for the next season."
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Guardiola was complimentary of his team's performance against Villa, though, singling out Doku for praise.
"I'm really happy," he said. "We're in the last four, five games and a Champions League contender for qualification.
"Aston Villa is a team to the last man, one of the top, one of the best teams in Europe.
"We played really good in all departments. We were aggressive in our duels, the back four was unbelievable."
"Football is emotion," Guardiola added. "For the fans, players, we have a lot of pressure for the club to go to the Champions League.
"The players behaved unbelievable [in the last two games] - we are really pleased. The action from Jeremy [Doku], I know how he can create something with his pace. And we arrived [with] players in the box.
"The performance was really, really good in all departments."
Emery: 'We can't waste time'
Aston Villa boss Unai Emery had contrasting emotions after watching his side squander a potentially valuable point.
"We can't waste time, we lost in the last minute of this match, but we competed well - we were close to drawing," he said. "We were trying to win the match as well with the subs, but they do the same and they score.
"Over 90 minutes, they [Man City] dominated more, but we played a good competitive match. [We] take a lot of positive things and now is a moment to be positive. I'm going to analyse the match and try to get a lot of information from it.
"We can't waste time now; we have to keep going. We want to try to keep the level that we're achieving and try to be demanding in our way so we can build us stronger in everything.
"Tomorrow, rest. Thursday and Friday, positive and work hard to prepare for the game against Crystal Palace."
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