Pep Guardiola has shown Man City fans relaxed approach for 11-day reckoning

Manchester City are about to embark on a brutal run of fixtures that could determine the success of their season.

Over the next 11 days the Blues will face Atletico Madrid over two legs in the Champions League quarter-finals, as well as a top of the table Premier League clash with Liverpool, before an FA Cup semi-final against the same opponent a week later. The thought of enduring what is bound to be an intense 360 minutes of football is enough to send shivers down most supporters' spines, but City boss Pep Guardiola appears, for the time being, to be remarkably cool.

After City comfortably dispatched of Burnley with a 2-0 win on Saturday — a result that reinstated their one point advantage over Liverpool at the top of the table — Guardiola was in a relaxed mood. He even kicked off his post-match press conference with a joke, before explaining that Atletico and Liverpool have not been at the forefront of his mind recently.

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"[Diego Simeone] is a master for the Champions League knockout stages. There are many games during the game, and he handles different types of games perfectly. [Sunday] we start to talk about them. [I was a] little worried about this game [against Burnley] more than Liverpool," he said.

It sounds ridiculous that, with respect to Burnley, Guardiola would be more worried about the team sat 19th in the Premier League than the threat posed by two of Europe's best sides. But, as he explained, he had had just one training session with his players after the international break, while Riyad Mahrez, one of his key attackers this season, was not in a god headspace following Algeria's heart-breaking failure to qualify for the