Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola ‘would love’ to sign new contract and stay next season

Guardiola’s current contract expires at the end of the 2020-21 season

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola (Getty Images)

Pep Guardiola is open to signing a new contract at Manchester City and staying beyond the end of his fifth season at the Etihad.

Guardiola is yet to commit himself beyond the end of the 2020-21 campaign and extend terms which are set to expire next summer.

The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich head coach has never spent more than four seasons at one club, though agreed to a fifth year at City following the 2017-18 Premier League title win.

Guardiola is happy to stay longer still but believes he has to prove that he deserves to be City’s manager after last year’s runners-up league finish and Champions League quarter-final exit.

“I would love to stay longer here,” Guardiola said. “It is a place I love to be but I have to deserve [it]. 

“This club achieved standards in the last decade but we have to maintain that and I have to deserve it. I am going to see if I deserve it this season in terms of how the club goes forward and improves.”

Guardiola said that the club have not set any minimum expectation that he must meet in order to earn a new deal but that he will know himself whether he deserves to stay beyond next summer.

“No, this is my mind. We didn’t speak with the club in these terms,” he said. “They didn’t push me from day one to today in September. They allow me to do my job the best I can and with all my staff and the players and this is going to continue to do.  

“They didn’t tell me you have to do this or you have to that or you have to win this or you have to win that. They told me to play. 

"In my feeling, I know the standards of the club and if I don’t achieve the standards, I probably don’t deserve so I have to win to extend my contract.”

Guardiola does not expect a decision on his future soon, however, given the compacted fixture schedule.

“We have every three days a game so we don’t have much time to think about it,” he said. “I try to see every day Txiki [Begiristain, director of football] and Ferran [Soriano, chief executive] and I speak every week with Khaldoon [al Mubarak, chairman].  

“When it is going to happen, it is going to happen. Now we have other issues. The organisation is so strong in all departments. It will not be a problem for the club to do what we have to do in the future.”