Pep Guardiola said that winning the FA Cup will not be enough to save Manchester City’s troubled season after reaching the final the day Liverpool put an end to his reign as the Premier League champions. The Guardiola team had been crowned English champion in the last four seasons, but their lamentable form for a large part of this mandate has given Liverpool the chance to seal a 20th high -flying title. The coronation of Liverpool was sealed with a 5-1 rout of Tottenham which ended almost the exact moment that the full-time whistle blew at Wembley to report the 2-0 victory of City against Nottingham Forest in the semifinals of the FA Cup.
Rico Lewis scored after only 109 seconds before Josko Gvardiol extended the city’s advantage in the second half.
City will face Crystal Palace during their third successive final of the FA Cup on May 17.
The fourth Guardiola team is also underway to qualify for the Champions League via a top five in the Premier League.
But when he was put to the Spanish that the glory of the FA Cup and the qualification in the Champions League would mark a “successful” campaign, he replied: “No, and I said it several times.
“This season has not been good. We are a thousand million points behind Liverpool, so go, this season has not been good.
“Watch the Champions League. How many games have we won? One or two? And we have always been a machine.
“We cannot confuse that the season was good if we finish in the top five and we qualify for the Champions League.
“The club must make decisions, good, so that next season is better.”
City is 21 points behind Liverpool in the League and a point away from Chelsea and Forest, who also have a match in hand, in the race for the first five places.
“Being in another final talks so much about the volume of generation of players and this club. And we are very happy that we are in the final,” said Guardiola, who won the FA Cup twice in his reign of the city.
“But the season is defined by the Premier League and is consistent and this season could not happen.
“The most important thing is the qualification for the Champions League and we must be calm now and recover.”
City will be favorites in the final after having sent the 5-2 palace to the Etihad stadium earlier in April.
But Guardiola was impressed by the 3-0 Palace victory over Aston Villa in the semi-finals on Saturday and warned against excessive confidence.
“We have four finals to play, then an incredible match against Palace, and we saw yesterday how good they are,” he said.
(This story has not been published by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a unionized flow.)
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