Pep Guardiola expects to have to fight until the end to ensure Manchester City qualify for next season’s Uefa Champions League.
City, having been tipped to challenge for the title this year, are fifth in the Premier League heading into Sunday’s clash with Swansea City.
Victory would take them above Arsenal and Liverpool into third but the battle for top-four positions is tight. Guardiola was appointed in the hope he could guide City towards Champions League glory and so missing out altogether would represent a blow to the club’s ambitions.
“It is possible that we won’t qualify,” Guardiola said. “Today we are not in the Champions League [positions].
“But we are going to see at the end of the season and then you will see my impression [of it]. Let us fight until the end. Let me try at least that – fight.”
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City have played some of their best football for some time since being jolted into action by a 4-0 defeat at Everton last month.
In the last three games they have been highly impressive in a 2-2 draw with Tottenham Hotspur and beaten Crystal Palace – in the FA Cup – and West Ham United convincingly. In such form they should be strong challengers for the top four.
Key to their recent success has been the potency of an attack reinvigorated by the arrival of Gabriel Jesus and the improved form of Leroy Sane.
Jesus, the £27 million (Dh124m) signing from Palmeiras, has shone in his first three games while Sane, after a slow start since his £37m arrival last summer, has scored three goals in his last four appearances.
The pair are 19 and 21 years old respectively and, combined with Raheem Sterling, 22, City’s attacking line is full of youthful promise.
Guardiola’s next challenge will be to freshen up his defence. All four of his senior full-backs – Pablo Zabaleta (32), Bacary Sagna (33), Gael Clichy (31) and Aleksandar Kolarov (31) – are among those who could make way at the end of the season.
Guardiola said: “We realise that we have a lot of players over 30. For example, full-backs are 31, 32.
“But they are so important. We cannot change absolutely everything in one season. I can understand how important Yaya [Toure], Kolarov or Gael are, or the personality from Pablo, in the locker room.
“At the end, the heart and soul of the team are the old players, the people who know the club.
“Sooner or later of course the process is going to change. I think the situation is starting but it cannot be possible to do that for eight, nine players.
“It is impossible because every player costs £45-50 million and it is not good to change seven, eight or nine players.”
* Press Association
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
