Pep won’t sacrifice style at City

In an exclusive interview with Sky Sports’ Geoff Shreeves, Pep Guardiola says he wants Manchester City on the ball for “90 minutes”, and insists he won’t win games ugly.

Guardiola took over from Manuel Pellegrini in the summer following his three-year stint at Bayern Munich, and won his first Premier League game in charge 2-1 over Sunderland last weekend.

Ahead of the Saturday lunchtime trip to Stoke City, live on Sky Sports, the Spaniard told Shreeves that he will not sacrifice build-up play for results, and wants to build a City side that is attractive, but has purpose.

“I want the ball, for 90 minutes” Guardiola said. “When I don’t have the ball I go high pressing because I want the ball.”

Asked if he would sacrifice his style for results, he said: “Impossible, impossible. It’s a sacrifice for what reason? If you lose a game, and you believe in it, you keep going.

“I want to win, I want to play serious, I want to be effective. If I believed in it and it wasn’t productive for the team, I wouldn’t do it.

“But I won [with this style] as a football player and manager, and when we did that we scored a lot of goals and conceded few.”

Leicester City won the …

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