Pep Guardiola makes early assessment of Manchester City’s Premier League title-winning credentials

Pep Guardiola has revealed whether or not he believes his Manchester City side have the right mentality to defend their Premier League crown for another season.

Guardiola’s Manchester City squad have started the ongoing season in fine form, winning all eight of their games across all competitions, including their opening six matches in Premier League action so far.

But such a start is somewhat new to this iteration of Manchester City, who have notoriously been slow out of the blocks in recent seasons, instead kicking into action during the business end of campaigns.

A refresh of the squad in the summer could have struck fear in the hearts of the Manchester City faithful, with veteran stars including Riyad Mahrez and club captain İlkay Gündoğan leaving for greener pastures in Saudi Arabia and Spain respectively.

However, new signings Mateo Kovačić, Jérémy Doku, Matheus Nunes, and Joško Gvardiol have all hit the ground running, helping Manchester City to one of their best starts to a campaign in the Pep Guardiola era.

While City remained perfect following yet another victory in the Premier League, this time in a 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest, Pep Guardiola is not getting ahead of himself when it comes to the mentality of his squad.

“So far, yeah (they have the mentality to defend the Premier League title). But the season is so long, a lot of games, a lot of players with a lot of minutes already and that is not good. But when we have to travel, always I thought, ‘How will the people be who come?’

“In terms of how good we are, how nice we are. We’re going to do the principles and work with each-other. That’s why it’s important sometimes to bring in new players because they don’t have nothing to defend, they have to do everything to win, and it’s different when you’ve won.

“In general we are there, we are stable, we create more chances than the opponent, our expected goals are always higher, much higher than the opponents – that is good terms. It’s good, but we are in October, the season is so long but it’s important to start really well after winning what we won.”

While Manchester City have had a somewhat casual start to the ongoing season, facing only two team’s from the top-half of last season’s Premier League table so far, their fixture list will begin to get more gruelling as the autumn wears on.

In the month of October alone, Manchester City will take on Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium, Manchester United at Old Trafford, and over in the UEFA Champions League, RB Leipzig in Germany.