At Man City to learn, says coach Guardiola

New Manchester City head coach Pep Guardiola on Sunday said he is at the English Premier League club to learn as much as possible as he has no preconception about the football league.

The 45-year-old Catalan, winner of 22 trophies in seven years as coach of Barcelona and Bayern Munich, was introduced to fans for the first time at the Etihad Cityzens Weekend event here on Sunday.

Guardiola will take his first training session on Monday and his first match will be against his old club Bayern on July 20 at the Allianz Arena. From there he and the team will jet out to Asia for the next leg of the pre-season tour.

"I have no preconceptions at all about coming to England or the football in the Premier League. I want to learn as much as possible. I have an idea of how we will play, but when I arrived in Germany with Bayern Munich, I had some ideas of how the team would play but changed them as I went along," Guardiola was quoted as saying by club's official website.

"I know how hard the Premier League is and some people have said that I will find it hard to play the football I like to play in England so I said to myself 'Why not?' That's why I'm here -- because I want to try," he added.

"We have to find a way to win and if we win one game, the next week we will say 'OK, let's try and do the same things this week' -- and if we win again, we'll say, 'let's do the things that won us those two games' and so on."

Guardiola has already signed German midfielder Ilkay Gundogan from Borussia Dortmund and Spanish forward Nolito from La Liga side Celta Vigo.

The head coach has signed a three-year contract with the club.

--IANS

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