Manchester City boss, Pep Guardiola admitted that the Premier League is the toughest league to compete in due to the quality of the teams that compete in it.

In an interview, the Manchester City coach stated he believes the Premier League is the toughest league he ever competed in.

A statement like that coming from one of the best coaches made on the front pages of Premier League news with the league supporters happily agreeing their favourite league surely is the hardest to win even for the best.

A coach like Guardiola who has numerous titles in Spain, Germany and of course England in addition to countless individual awards surely knows what he is talking about when he marks one league the hardest to compete in and ultimately win.

Coming from Pep, who is eyeing a back-to-back title in England’s top flight, he has got the chance to know the league inside and out in his years with the Sky Blues. Prior to Man City’s match against Leicester City, Guardiola was stopped for a quick interview.

When asked if he is satisfied with the point tally Manchester City managed to accumulate this season, he stated (Source – FourFourTwo):

“Yeah, it’s the toughest league I’ve ever played as a manager, for the quality of the rivals – no doubts. That’s why being at the top is incredible. But of course only one will take the prize and the other one will be at home sad.”

Reflecting on the title race Manchester City and Liverpool have been going through for the past few months, Guardiola said City’s current position is a great achievement.

He also added:

“We have to win to give more credit to it, of course. I would not say that 100 points we had last season was bad and that we are not satisfied. But at the same time, we were seven points behind this season.

Talking about the strength of the league and at the same time having two teams way ahead of the herd seems to contradict itself, however, we must take into consideration Man City and Liverpool have been phenomenal this season, while other top four contenders had their own problems.

The internal issues in Chelsea and Manchester United, streaks of bad form for Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal and as mentioned the exceptional form of Liverpool and Manchester City all contributed to the Premier League table we are looking at now.

Does that mean Premier League is not as strong? Far from it.

England’s elite league is known to be filled with upsets when we see teams who sit at the bottom part of the league putting up a good fight against even the top six teams. This simply cannot be compared to Germany or Spain, where there are two to three teams capable of winning the title, while others are in more or less only for the show.

Additionally, it would be hard to deny England has strong teams, especially if we look at the European tournaments.

In the Champions League, we’ve got Liverpool in the final and Tottenham in the semi-finals, and in the Europa League, we have Arsenal and Chelsea still more than capable of going all the way in that competition.

While I could go on and list all the reasons why the Premier League just might really be the strongest league in the world, I believe it’s enough if those words come out of the mouth of Pep Guardiola, who is widely considered one of the best coaches in the world, who won at least one league title with each of the three clubs he coached in addition to success on European level.

Posted on May 8th, 2019 by scott
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