(The one who hasn’t, Tottenham’s Mauricio Pochettino, finished third in the Premier League previous year.) Four of the six have reached the Champions League final and, of course, Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, who now coach Manchester City and Manchester United respectively, have both won the biggest prize in club football a couple of times.
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“We are here to win titles but there are six, seven, eight big Premier League teams”, he told reporters on Friday.
City have been linked with a move for Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, with 29-year-old Hart’s future the subject of plenty of speculation in the off-season.
“Joe is a player I’m so happy about his qualities, his behaviour, what he means to this club”, he said. We’re going in the right direction. “Now, he is a player of us”.
Everton start a new era under Ronald Koeman with a tricky fixture against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday.
Captain Vincent Kompany is working his way back to fitness after groin surgery and Nicolas Otamendi is due to undergo a pre-match fitness test on a tendon problem.
In an extra complicating factor, City visit Steaua Bucharest on Tuesday for the first leg of their Champions League qualifying play-off.
Returning to Manchester with a little less fanfare is Sunderland’s David Moyes, who filled the vacancy at the Stadium of Light after Sam Allardyce was appointed England coach.
The Black Cats have a decent squad and should be fine this season, but Collymore feels that they will suffer an opening day defeat as he backs City to send a warning shot and win 3-0 in-front of their own fans.
“To play with soul, we don’t need time”. “There are a lot of games and players can not play every three days so the players who are ready will play more”. With Txiki [Begiristain], with the chairman, we are going to talk about that. “We are going to decide”.
Guardiola will analyse his squad over the next few weeks before deciding who stays or goes.
“Tomorrow, to create something we need time”.
“To create something we need time, to create something with ideas to attack we need time”.
It has been a close season of significant upheaval at City, who have also re-designed their club crest, and Kevin De Bruyne has warned that it will take time for Guardiola’s methods to take effect. We could see either fullback Aleksandar Kolarov, midfielder Fernando, or Jason Denayer come in as his partner tomorrow. Sane didn’t train with us, he’s out – in the next week I think he’ll start to train. N’Golo Kante stiffens up the midfield, Michy Batshuayi is an exciting up-and-comer and you get a sense that their transfer business isn’t quite over: There’s a lot of ground to make up after the club’s worst league finish in 20 years.
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“Of course Sterling likes to play on the left but that is when it is good to know the players”.
