Pep Guardiola has shouldered the blame for Manchester City's underwhelming campaign, and does not feel winning the FA Cup will not make the season a good one.

City are fifth in the Premier League with nine games remaining, while they have also been knocked out of the Champions League.

The FA Cup remains their only realistic chance of salvaging a trophy from their disappointing season, though they must first navigate a tricky quarter-final tie against Bournemouth on Sunday.

City's struggles this season have largely been put down to the loss of Ballon d'Or winner Rodri due to injury and the drop in form of key players from Guardiola's tenure such as Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan and Kyle Walker, who joined AC Milan in January.

Yet Guardiola said the responsibility lies at his feet.

"The opponents never gave us a red carpet to win the titles that we won in the past," he told reporters, having said he rates his work this season as "really poor".

"My duty was to overcome the situation much better than I have done.

"Hopefully, this will not happen next season. This is important."

En route

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According to Opta's predictive model, City have a 57.5% chance of finishing in the top four, though the Premier League's top five are likely to qualify for the Champions League.

Winning the FA Cup would also be a path into Europe (via the Europa League). City have won the trophy twice under Guardiola, last doing so in their treble-winning campaign in 2022-23, while they reached the final last season, losing to Manchester United.

"Of course it would be nice to arrive in the final of the FA Cup and win it, and qualify for the Champions League," said Guardiola.

"That would be a big success but the season has been poor and it's not going to change.

"Our standards and many things were not good, this is the reality. That's not going to change for the fact we win one title or qualify for the Champions League.

"We'll be happy, of course. We want to do it but the season has not been good."

City have won their last seven FA Cup quarter-final ties, with these coming in the last eight campaigns. Their run of reaching the semi-final in six consecutive seasons is already a record in the competition.