Pep Guardiola won’t be taking Premier League games against Brighton and Brentford lightly because he’s eager for his players to maintain their ‘tone’ heading into our showpiece final double-header.

Guardiola’s City have already won the title for 2022/23 – our third in succession - and celebrated on the pitch following a 1-0 win over Chelsea.

That’s left matches against the Seagulls and Bees to complete the top-flight campaign this week before attention turns to the FA Cup final against Manchester United on 3 June and the Champions League final against Inter on 10 June.

Guardiola knows both opponents, on Wednesday and Sunday, will be eager for the scalp of the champions, making the games even more difficult than normal.

But he wants to see his team keep their levels high leading into what could be a historic couple of weeks for the football club.

He said: “It would be better to maintain our tone.

“I’m not talking about win or lose, I want to see that our tone is there.

“We cannot play like we have won [the Premier League]. Against these two teams, if we aren’t ready we will suffer a lot. And after it would be a problem.

“But if we maintain the tone and they beat us, they beat us – it can happen.

“It is understandable because they play against Manchester City, the winners in the last years of the Premier League and they want to show how good they are, that’s normal.

“The target of the Premier League is done. But we cannot drop much otherwise it will be more difficult.”

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Guardiola takes football game-by-game but he has allowed himself to look ahead to the huge matches against United and Inter.

He insists United will be ‘really, really difficult’ while he praised the Italian ‘mentality’ in finals.

He added: “The demanding FA Cup final against Man United will be really, really difficult. And I have started to watch minutes of Inter and I am really impressed. I am really impressed with what they do.

“The body language that they have and many things. It’s not a coincidence that there are three Italian teams in the final of the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League and in the semi-finals there were more. So they are there.

“I know because I played there and I know the mentality that Italian teams have in the finals. So two decades ago, the Italian league was the best league in the world. Everyone wanted to go there – players, managers, they all wanted to go there.

“How many World Cups have they won already? This is their mentality.

“I said right after – to play in a final against an Italian team is always really complicated.

“I saw a bit already. I called a few friends who live in Italy to see how they are. All the people tell me: ‘Be alert’. It’s not necessary to tell me because I felt it. I saw already some minutes in some games.”