Pep Guardiola believes it will be impossible for Manchester City to repeat last season’s treble. City became the second club to win the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup and Guardiola, who won an equivalent treble with Barcelona in 2008-09, moved to dampen expectations before his team begin their title defence at Burnley on Friday.
“It’s once in a lifetime,” he said. “I said to the players: ‘Forget about it. We climbed the highest mountain last season with what we have done.’ But the last two days we came down from the mountain and we start from there, everyone with the same intention. There will be a lot of difficulties to climb the mountain as high as possible – we’ll see.
