Pep Guardiola said it himself after Manchester City’s defeat to Manchester United in the fourth round of the EFL Cup.
‘I want to try to win,’ he said following the defeat at Old Trafford which signalled six games without victory for the City boss.
It confirmed Guardiola’s worst run as a manager but given his side’s position at the top of the Premier League table few at the Etihad are at panic stations.
Indeed, it was a 10-game winning streak which had many confident that the east side of Manchester would be celebrating title glory and added silverware come May.
Still, Guardiola is not used to going so long without celebrating a win – Swansea away in the league on September 24 the last time it happened – and failure to pick up three points at West Brom on Saturday will see the level of scrutiny rise somewhat.
His decision to start a reserve team against United showed his hand. The formerly named and often neglected League Cup wasn’t a trophy he was targeting.
Nevertheless it was a defeat and losing three games in five has put City on their worst run since December 2008.
That sort of statistic just wasn’t something you would have associated Guardiola with during his time at Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
The 45-year-old was a hero in Catalonia. Three La Liga titles and two European Cups thrust him into a position where he was envied and feared.
There were bumps in the road but nothing to cause too much concern. After he lost his first match in charge against Numancia in August 2008 he followed that up with a draw against Racing Santander.
How did he overcome that? By winning 19 of his next 20 games in La Liga of course.
Life was made a little difficult in the same season when Barca went five games without victory but that was rectified when he guided them to a 2-0 win over Athletic Bilbao.
Come the end of the campaign Guardiola was hailed as a genius after he won La Liga, Copa del Rey and the Champions League for the first time as a coach.
At Bayern, although he didn’t win the Champions League, he won the Bundesliga three years on the bounce from the year he took over in 2013.
He kept an even tighter ship in Germany too. The worst it ever got was went he went four games without a win in 2015.
Two Bundesliga losses, defeat against Borussia Dortmund in the German Cup final and a 3-0 pasting at the hands of Barcelona in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final wasn’t great but it didn’t get any worse than that.
Sixteen games in at City and he feels he knows his players. His approach has served him well abroad and is far from failing in England.
He knew when he arrived here that life wouldn’t be as easy. His old rival Jose Mourinho will have told him that and others will no doubt have said similar in passing.
He has time to learn but not an eternity. A win in the Midlands at the weekend wouldn’t immediately reaffirm his position at the top of the class but it would go some way to keeping the skeptics quiet. As he says, he wants to win.
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