Manchester City Target Treble After Pep Guardiola’s Mid-Season Motivation

Following a 4-2 win against Tottenham Hotspur in January, Pep Guardiola issued a rallying cry in an attempt to lift Manchester City from a slump induced by their own success.

Since then, City has only lost one game and is currently on a 16-game unbeaten run in all competitions. This includes eight wins in the previous nine Premier League games as they aim to catch Arsenal at the top of the table.

At that mid-season point, City’s Catalan head coach believed a somewhat understandable complacency was creeping in.

A complacency he wanted to eradicate—needed to eradicate—if his side were to recover ground on Arsenal at the top of the Premier League.

“I want a reaction from the whole club, the whole organisation, not just the players—the staff, everyone,” Guardiola said following that comeback win against Spurs at the Etihad Stadium.

“We are a happy flowers team. A happy flowers organisation. ‘Ah it’s good.’ No, I don’t want to be a happy flower. I want to beat Arsenal. But if we play in that way Arsenal will destroy us, will beat us.”

Guardiola spoke of a lack of intensity throughout organisation, including in the stands at City’s home stadium in the Eastlands area of Manchester, and how this would need to change if the club was to build on previous success.

“We have the problem that we have four Premier Leagues in five years and Arsenal have two decades without a Premier League,” Guardiola said. “Every game, every ball, every action is there [for Arsenal]. We miss it. We don’t have it.

“There needs to be fire in every action and in every situation. It’s not about being better or not better, it’s about [gestures] ‘let’s go!’.”

As City heads into a title showdown with a stuttering Arsenal, Guardiola believes some of that desire to win has returned. Players can now see a finishing line and the potential glory that could be theirs once they cross it.

With the club still in the race for the Champions League, FA Cup, and Premier League, there is talk of a Treble.

It is the added feeling that every game is a final that Guardiola believes is natural motivation for his players at this stage of the season.

“We arrive at the end of a season knowing if we lose games, the situation will be over,” Guardiola said in his press conference ahead of the Arsenal game.

“In October and September, October and November, you can’t have that feeling, especially when you have made two back-to-back championships.

“When we won our first Premier League, or achieved the 100-point season, we started the season like every game was a final.

“I remember perfectly that feeling, and it’s one that Arsenal had this season from the beginning.

“When we started this season—first game, second game, third game after back-to-back Premier Leagues, it was not a final.

“Now, in the last few months, we had that feeling—FA Cup, Champions League, and Premier League—that is the truth because we can see the end real, real close. You now know exactly what you’re playing for.”

It has been proven throughout the history of sport that exceptional teams with exceptional players, no matter how well they are backed financially, still need to find something else if they are to make that final step of lifting trophies and claiming league titles.

This season, Manchester City has had to dig deeper than usual to find that extra spark, but the recent run of games suggests it has been found at just the right time.

The result of Wednesday night’s head-to-head between City and Arsenal will obviously play a big part in deciding the final destination of the 2023 Premier League trophy, but there will still be games to play after this—five for Arsenal and seven for Manchester City.

Though the destiny will be in the hands of one team or the other after this game, there could still be twists and turns.

From Guardiola’s and City’s point of view, every game is like a final once again, quite literally in the case of the FA Cup, while they also have a two-legged Champions League semifinal with Real Madrid to contend with.

In the middle of the season, Guardiola used that extraordinary post-Spurs press conference to motivate his players, the fans, and the whole organisation.

With three prestigious trophies now in sight, his work in that particular aspect of leading the club might already be done.

Players and fans see silverware on the horizon and the prospect of a memorable Treble, which should be enough motivation in itself.