'This season we can go through' - Pep Guardiola already has plan to land Man City FA Cup win

Pep Guardiola is already thinking about how Manchester City can maximise their chances of reaching the FA Cup final.

City moved into the quarter-finals of the competition with a 3-0 win at Championship side Bristol City, but despite being favourites to lift the trophy they have only actually won it once under Guardiola, back in 2019. Since then, there have been three successive tame exits at the semi-final stage, to Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool respectively.

Guardiola admitted after beating Bristol City that in recent years his team have had too little left in the tank after going all out in their Champions League quarter-final days before their trip to Wembley. Two years ago, City won in Dortmund before last season's bruising encounter with Atletico in Madrid.

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Should City make it to this year's semi-final and beat RB Leipzig in the Champions League last-16, they will face a familiar predicament: the second leg of a continental quarter will take place in the same week as the penultimate round of the FA Cup. Guardiola is mindful of where his team have fallen short in previous years and keen to be better prepared if they find themselves in that situation this year.

"This competition is so nice," said Guardiola. "We won once, we arrived at three semi-finals but we didn't perform well.

"I remember those semi finals mainly because they were just three days after away games in the Champions League and we were exhausted. Hopefully this season we can go through, arrive in better conditions to complete the final of the FA Cup because it is a really nice competition."

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