As the clock ticked past the half-hour mark Pep Guardiola was still talking. There must have been 30 to 40 journalists in the room, a row of cameras pointing down at the Manchester City manager from the back, but it was beginning to feel like it was just Guardiola and his inquisitor. He kept his eyes locked on the person asking the question as he laid bare the challenges in front of him.. Amid the worst run of his managerial career, Guardiola opened up in a way he has rarely done so before in 492 games as City boss. By the end, it was beginning to feel like a therapy session, and you wondered if Guardiola would have left the room and headed to the training pitches feeling like he had unburdened himself in some way.. For so long, Guardiola has been like an ice skater picking up bouquets after a perfect performance, garlanded with praise for the team he has built and the inventions he has created. There have been bad days at the Etihad, but there has never been anything as sustained as this.. ALSO READ: What Pep Guardiola asked of Manchester City owners during difficult run. ALSO READ: I heard Pep Guardiola change before Liverpool game – City have a crisis. This is now a run of six games without a win, and after five straight defeats, it was the draw that stopped the rot that might have been most damaging of all. A three-goal collapse against Feyenoord led Guardiola to inflict scratches on his head as he struggled to comprehend what he was witnessing.. Three days later only the cut on his nose remained, but the 53-year-old still looked a slightly stressed and under pressure figure as he appeared for his press conference to preview Sunday’s trip to Anfield. Jurgen Klopp might be gone, but this rivalry has defined Guardiola’s City era, yet very few of the questions were about that.. The final five questions of the press conference were all to Guardiola and about Guardiola. It offered a rare insight into his methods and thought process during an unprecedented period in his 942-game managerial career.. Part of you wondered if there was maybe an element of the struggles of the past few weeks that Guardiola was enjoying. That challenge of finding a solution, the idea of him jolting awake in the middle of the night and jotting another idea down. His is a restless and inquisitive mind, after all. But no, he is not enjoying it, as a firm shake of the head when the question was put to him made clear.. “I don’t enjoy it all. I don’t like it. I don’t sleep as good as when I won every game. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to do it,” he said.. “This shall pass, I don’t know when, but nothing is eternal, not even our lives. When I face this situation I think with my heart this is normal, maybe not in this five games or three games losing in the Premier League, but maybe it’s more unusual to win four Premier League in a row, right? So in that moment I was stable enough, I was happy because I eat better and sleep better, but I was not thinking differently to who I am.. “I’m the same person as four Premier Leagues in a row and in that situation, I have the same doubts. Now I want to be more closer to the players, my hugs and my arms are closer to them because I know they are suffering.”. That was a little insight into Guardiola’s approach. He admitted he was often tougher on the players when they were winning, but now he is suddenly seeing their frailties. When things were going wrong, his instinct was to pull them close and even protect them.. He said the two-year contract extension he signed was because of the players and the success they’ve enjoyed, but also admitted to the possibility that this could be the end of an era.. “All the players we have, 70% or 80% of the players gave us the last three or four Premier Leagues,” said Guardiola. “It’s three years later, it’s four years later, I’m three years [older]. People change, we get old, and the targets sometimes change, it’s normal.. “I said that now we start to try and win games for a long run and I will have the same feelings because sooner or later it will happen. People say it’s the end of them, maybe. It’s November, we’ll see what happens until the end [of the season]. But what can you do? Cry for that? We have to try and do it and stay for many years fighting for this.”. Having spoken warmly about his players, Guardiola was asked if he still believed in himself. He highlighted his own stubbornness as a trait and expressed the dangers of being too reflective around results. City played poorly against Inter on the night they won a historic treble and have played much better individual matches in some of their most heartbreaking Champions League defeats.. Finally, the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss considered whether and how he had changed. It has been 17 years since he took charge of his first Barcelona B game and 16 years since he won the treble in his first season at the Nou Camp.. In recent weeks, and especially recent days, he has looked like he is suffering. It’s only a week since he signed a new contract, but his body language on Tuesday was that of a manager feeling the strain. The challenge in front of him is a new one, but he doesn’t believe he has changed.. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I still have passion, still I stand up in the morning to say, ‘OK, I’m going to prepare the training, the game plan from Liverpool, the way they defend, the way they attack. What do you have to do? You have two days for that’.. “Continue the same. I would say more, more, because when the situation gets more comfortable, OK, you can relax a little bit in that moment. The fact that maybe it’s not good, you know, to maybe you should relax a little bit. But no, I’m the same.”. Guardiola pointed to that contract extension as evidence of his passion for the job, but he was open in admitting that if he feels he becomes the problem at any point, he will walk away.. “If I extend, it is because I feel it. I’m not sitting here just for what I’ve done or for, or because still I’m happy. Still I want to try,” he said.. “But I don’t want to stay in the place like I feel I’m a problem. I don’t want to [just] because the contract is there. My chairman knows it. And I said to him, give me the chance to try to come back. And after if we are not able to do it, we have to change.. “I never asked to stay, but more than ever, I’ll ask to my hierarchy, give me the chance, it would have been easy for me to go while doing well, but I don’t want [to leave] now. I had the feeling that still I have a job to do and I want to do it. I want to do it.”. And with that, he was off, back to his office and on to the training pitches. Planning and plotting and looking for a solution.
