Pep Guardiola concedes that he “makes no sense” on the sidelines at Manchester City, but feels his side have improved dramatically.
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The Catalan coach is renowned for his antics in the dugout, with the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss kicking every ball on the touchline.
He is hoping to tone that side of his personality down, though, with nerves forcing him to “explode” when attempting to get his message across.
Guardiola, speaking at Thursday’s ‘Manchester City's Evening with Manager’ presented by Betsafe, said: “At a game, it is ridiculous what I do because it makes no sense, the players don’t hear me. It is a moment when I am so nervous and so worried about what’s happening, I have to explode but hopefully in the future when I am older, I can control myself.
“In the beginning of the season, I thought ‘okay Pep, this year you will be calm’ and I think that this year I am improving, even just a little!
“Even on the training pitch, it is who I am, I am the manager on the pitch and in the training sessions so we can improve on loads of things and when you realise the players are a little bit better, that is the reason why we are managers. That situation is fantastic.”
Whatever Guardiola is doing at present, it is clearly working, with City top the Premier League table and having gone unbeaten through their opening 10 games in all competitions.
Pressed on whether he feels that he has made a greater impact on his side than he did in 2016-17, Guardiola added: “I saw before the international break, the games against Chelsea and after the game, I said ‘wow, we look good’ and then I saw the game back and said ‘wow, we have a lot to improve’.
“It is true that it’s a better team than the year before and it is better than the month before which is a good sign and hopefully by the end of the season we will be better than we are now. That is never ending in football, you can always improve in many things which is good.
“It would be a disaster if we were worse than last season but I feel we are solid and a good team and it depends on the little things. If the situation is going well and the people make a lot of good things but as a manager, the warnings need to be clear and quick.”
He added on City’s flying start to the campaign, which has seen them net 22 times in seven Premier League fixtures: “At this moment, it looks like it but we are in the first week of October. I think last season Chelsea were further behind than they are this season and they ended above us so we have a long time.
“If you believe it is already done then we won’t win so we have to wait. But in this moment, we have to continue what we were doing before and now our players have gone all over the place and we have to regain our form from before the international break.”
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