Prior to their trip to North London to face Arsenal on Sunday, Manchester City are third on the league table and are now 17 points behind league leaders Liverpool, who won earlier on Saturday against Watford.
The Citizens won five domestic trophies in two seasons, a standard that has raised the red flag to the other English teams.
Ahead of the English champions’ crucial game against the Gunners at Emirates on Sunday, the former Bayern Munich and Barcelona coach says reaching 100 points in the Premier League could be the norm, rather than a special case.
“When we arrived here the standard was 85-90 points to win,” the 48-year-old told reporters.
“Now you have to reach almost 100 points to win the Premier League. We helped, with Liverpool, to make this step, with incredible, top players.”
“Now it’s a level we again have to reach. Now all the teams that are behind Liverpool, we know we have to reach almost 100 points.”
“I think maintaining 198 points (over two seasons) for three or four years is not easy… I knew it, I didn’t want to think too much at the beginning of the season, but I think we will be able to do it again.”
The Spanish coach insists he came to England just to change the playing style of City and to create new ways.
He said: “The reason why I came here was not the challenge.”
“The challenge is done here in the way we try to play.”
“In England, we were able to play the way we want to play and win a lot of titles considering the difficulty of this league, seven titles is not bad.”
“But the challenge will be to be in this position in three or four years without winning a title.”
“This time we struggle a little bit, especially with an opponent that we are incredibly far away from, but the target is to win the next games, talk about what we need to do, focus on cups and try to win Premier League again.”
