Pep Guardiola says his side need to be well prepared for the game at Wembley as he ponder on past semi final tie.
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola says his side needs to cope with the amount of game they will have to play in order not have an heartbeat in the FA Cup.
City have reached the semifinal of the tournament for the fifth consecutive season following their 6-0 win over Burnley.
Despite reaching the semi-finals on various occasions, they last won the FA Cup in 2019, with the past three campaigns seeing them crash out just before.
As a result, Guardiola believes his side need to be able to cope with vast amount of games on their horizon, with Premier League and Champions League clashes still to come.
“The worst game we play is always the semi-final of FA Cup at Wembley. Never we were there.
“Our performances were really poor every time. Even the year we won we struggled, against Brighton, not really good.
“Hopefully one year we can play the semi-finals here in Manchester – but the last years always before or after the Champions League quarter-final we travelled.
“We were not ready, tired, and hopefully this year we can prepare a bit better. The final of FA Cup is a dream to play and this season we are going to try.”
He added: “If the draw is Saturday, we play Saturday. We have to prepare better. To play the semi-finals, you have to be ready. It’s so important.
“We’ve played naively, no good. Three-zero against Liverpool [2022], I know they’re a good team but 3-0 at half-time? When we lost against Arsenal in Mikel [Arteta’s] first season [2020], it was really bad.
“Hopefully this time we can behave as who we are. I just always had the feeling that we didn’t compete, we were not there, we were not hungry enough.”
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