Manchester United vs Manchester City: Manuel Pellegrini admits ‘We threw our season into the garbage’

City manager admits his team have had a poor campaign but says there will be changes in the summer

Pellegrini says he has 'no concerns' about his future (Getty Images)

Manuel Pellegrini has accused his Manchester City players of "throwing their season in the garbage" over the past three months and added that his squad, which is the oldest in the Premier League, needed an overhaul in the summer.

The man who could become the first City manager to win five successive Manchester derbies today, said he could take the pressure of the media clamour for his dismissal after what he admitted was a poor season. “It has not been a good season, definitely not a good season,” he said. “But it was not so bad until the end of 2014. Then, we were at the top of the table, we were in the Champions League and we hadn’t started the FA Cup.

“In the last three months we threw it in the garbage, [that’s] all we did. But I think for the fans it is important to finish as near to the top of the table as we can.

“For me the pressure is always the same,” he added. “The pressure is to win the challenge I have with this club and with this moment. Maybe last year the pressure was to win the Premier League and we won two titles [including the League Cup]. I know that in this career you must live in the moment. The past is not so important; it is about the present. The pressure for a manager of a big team is always the same.

“This year you [the media] want to sack Wenger, after that Van Gaal, after that the manager of Liverpool, after that you sack me and then you sack the Everton manager – all except the team that is at the top of the table. You go to Spain and they sack Luis Enrique and Carlo Ancelotti. So what pressure are you talking about?”

Unless there is a dramatic shift, Pellegrini is expected still to be at the club in the summer, when the priority for a team who have scored 28 fewer goals than at the same stage of last season is to sign a striker. “There will be a lot of work to do, there is a lot of work to do every year,” he said.

“Maybe this is not the target we have set ourselves for this season but we continued past the group in the Champions League and we were unlucky to play against Barcelona. I don’t think we are at the same level as Barcelona but I assure you we are going to come closer in the next couple of years.”