Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola befuddled his critics by agreeing that luck has played a huge part in his success.
The Premier League champions aim to take a step towards the Champions League quarter-finals on Wednesday when they face Schalke in the first leg of their last-16 tie.
Pep Guardiola's charges have won 4 of their last 5 games, a slip up at Newcastle aside they have been in flying form.
They only lost one game in the Champions League group stages, a 2-1 defeat to Lyon didn't stop them topping Group F.
They’ve played 12 fixtures in all competitions since the New Year, winning 11 times and scoring 46 goals along the way.
Schalke have struggled in the Bundesliga – they've just 6 wins in 22 games. They are without a win in their last 4 games and are currently 14th in the table.
Guardiola surprised his harshest critics before the game - by completely agreeing with them.
The City boss addressed the “massive argument” he’s caused on Nigerian twitter space about whether or not he is the greatest coach of all time... or just lucky to have worked with great players.
Guardiola agrees with Nigerian Twitter trolls
"I completely agree with them. Completely agree with them. I would not argue for one second because when I was there I said many times that I had incredible players.
"I did as well with Munich and Manchester but in Barcelona I was a lucky guy, I'm sorry, I was lucky. I agree with them."
Guardiola on the old "fraud" accusations, namely that he only won the Champions League because of Messi and the lads. I've kept the question in because fair play to the lad, it was delivered excellently. NB I don't think Guardiola believes this pic.twitter.com/A685Uwqvw6
— Sam Lee (@SamLee) February 19, 2019
Former Republic of Ireland skipper Kenny Cunningham was on OTB AM on Wednesday and he feels there is no simple answer to the question:
“I think he’d be a little bit irked by the question but there’s a bit of honesty there, he’d be foolish not to because you can’t get away from it.
“You can talk about how good a coach he is, his management techniques, tactically how he sets the team up, his vision but when you talk about those individual players.
“Iniesta, Xavi playing at the peak of their powers, you can’t get away in terms of the individual quality he had at his disposal.
“He could argue he is responsible for the development in terms of how good they became, the knowledge he gave them from a tactical point of view.
“Telling them this is how we're going to play and they used their individual high level abilities that they had to implement that and become the team that they did.
“I dont think its an easy one thing or an other I think he helped them but certainly the individual qualities they had clearly helped him achieve what he did as well."
