“We’ll wake up in the morning” – Pep Guardiola issues thoughts on idea of Manchester City missing out on Champions League football | OneFootball

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has issued some honest thoughts on the prospect of his side failing to qualify for next season’s UEFA Champions League.

The reigning Premier League champions suffered a further significant blow to their hopes of qualifying for Europe’s premier club competition next season, having succumbed to a narrow 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest at the weekend.

Callum Hudson-Odoi’s single strike in the final 10 minutes of the contest meant that City left the contest empty-handed and now find themselves in fifth position after the weekend’s results, with an identical record this season to Newcastle United.

Pep Guardiola has recently played down the significance of Manchester City potentially missing out on Champions League football this season, despite the obvious financial implications on the club through the vast amounts of prize money they would miss out on.

Now, speaking during a recent press conference, Guardiola was quizzed for further explanation surrounding comments he made last week, suggesting that it would ‘not be the end of the world’ if the club failed to qualify for the UEFA Champions League.

“Listen, I want to qualify for the Champions League. Also it will not be good if we don’t qualify for the Champions League,” Guardiola clarified.

“What happened in the past with other teams in the Premier League, they have not this season or previous seasons in the Champions League. Of course we want to be in the Champions League, it will be a problem.

“But what I’m saying is that there are teams that don’t qualify, and still now they come back and they are there. How many years is Manchester City in the Champions League regularly? One decade? 10 years? Nine years? Ten years? No more than that.

“Before we never played in that competition. So of course we are used to doing exceptional things, and the people, and of course we have to try to do it. Of course we’ll be there, but at the end, of course, we’ll wake up in the morning, we’ll try to do a good season next season, and at the end we’ll have to continue.”

Pep Guardiola added, “And at the end in sport, as I said yesterday, knockout stage in the FA Cup, in the Champions League, in every competition, sometimes the circumstances, many details, make the difference.

“But in the Premier League, 38 games, if we are not able to finish in the first four or five it’s because we are not good enough, and we have to continue next season, we have to do it. But of course we have 10 games, it still is in our hands, we are going to try.”

On whether he has seen enough from his Manchester City players in the last few Premier League matches to suggest they are determined enough to finish in the division’s top-four places, Guardiola bluntly responded, “This is what I want. This is what I want.”

A further mammoth contest is on the horizon for the club in their chase for European football as they take on Brighton & Hove Albion at the Etihad Stadium, sitting just one points ahead of Fabian Hurzeler’s side coming into the contest on Saturday afternoon.