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The Catalan coach says teams without continental commitments are in a much better position to prepare for domestic matches
Pep Guardiola believes the uncompromised European Premier League teams have a “huge advantage” this season as Manchester City prepare to face West Ham in good form.
Teams like Everton and Aston Villa are off to a fast start and teams like City are now entering hectic schedules with the Champions League and Europa League group stage underway.
City are 11th in the table heading into the weekend, with seven points from four games, but, having played one game less than most, it can be considered a false position.
Last week’s victories over Arsenal and Porto have given City the impression that they have settled in after a difficult start to the season.
However, in West Ham they face a team that has had a surprising streak of form, following a 4-0 home win against Wolves by beating Leicester City 3-0 and drawing 3-3 at Tottenham thanks to a sensational comeback.
Results that would have felt outlandish in any other season are becoming commonplace, with closed-door football in the days of the pandemic dancing at an unknown pace.
“That’s why this league was always so difficult and everyone can lose everywhere,” Guardiola said, assessing the tensions in teams with European commitments.
“That’s why some guys have seven or eight days to prepare, a huge advantage for the other team. We can adjust, accept, handle the situation whether you are a player or a coach.
“All the teams that play in Europe have the same problem. The schedule is crazy for everyone. For three, four games in a row I may decide to use the same squad and other make changes.”
As for whether calendar congestion, among other factors, could lead to the most open title race in recent memory, Guardiola stressed that it was too early to make that decision.
“I don’t know. It’s too early to tell,” he said. “It seems because there are results that are not expected, but the situation we find ourselves in all over the world, not only in this training center, in our normal life, is influencing the game. We have played four, five games, no its alot.”
He noted that his team and Liverpool have dominated the last few seasons, but suggested that he has strayed out of the normal scheme of things, saying: “I think before coming here, the Premier League is the most open league in the world, many teams can earn it “.
At a pre-game press conference on Friday, less than 24 hours before his team took the field at West Ham, Guardiola admitted that he had yet to decide his starting eleven.
Kevin De Bruyne, Nathan Ake and Aymeric Laporte could be on target to come back from injury but Guardiola has had a long list of recent casualties and would only go so far as to say “some of them will be involved, some won.” ‘t “.
London Stadium has been a happy hunting ground for City in recent seasons, with five consecutive victories achieved by a total of 22-1, and West Ham sent at least four goals in every game.
These numbers illustrate the progress City have made, having scored just 22 goals in their last 20 visits to West Ham’s previous stadium, Upton Park.
But Guardiola knows his team’s intoxicating streak of travel to east London could come to a halt this weekend. For the first time since West Ham beat City 1-0 in March 2009, the London side enters the game higher than their Manchester opponents.
“The past is the past. We have had good results, but it is the past,” Guardiola said. “They played very well against Tottenham, not only in the last minute or in the second half; they played with a lot of personality. They are in good shape, in a good moment for them.”
A peculiarity of West Ham’s recent form is that its results so far correspond to the last time, in 1928, that it scored three or more goals in four consecutive league games.
West Ham now has three in a row, with a 4-0 home win, a 3-0 road win and a 3-3 draw on the road, and this is exactly how their 1928 streak progressed, with the fourth game being. of the sequence a victory at home 4-1.
