Manchester City are OUT of the Premier League title race confirms Pep Guardiola | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola has seemingly confirmed Manchester City out of the Premier League title race for this season amid their ongoing poor run of form.

The reigning Premier League champions are already out of one cup competition this season via a 2-1 away defeat to Tottenham in the fourth round of the tournament, and find themselves in a difficult position in two other challenges.

The weekend’s results across the English top-flight, as well as City’s 2-1 defeat away to Aston Villa, have left Pep Guardiola and his players languishing in seventh position and behind the likes of their opponents on Saturday, as well as Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth.

European competition does not paint any brighter picture for Manchester City either, as they find themselves on the verge of dropping out of the tournament entirely, requiring points from their final two games to book a play-off match for the last-16 stage of the Champions League.

Speaking during a new interview with TNT Sports around City’s visit to face Aston Villa on Saturday afternoon, manager Pep Guardiola insisted that the squad as a whole must “restart” and forget about their past successes this season.

“Now it’s like we have to start, to put what we have done here on the floor and step forwards and say, it doesn’t count, it’s over,” Guardiola said.

“You have to restart, you have to regain everything in our minds that everything is more difficult than ever. We can say how good we have been, that’s the truth, but that doesn’t help us to win games.”

However, for this season alone, Guardiola is of the belief that Manchester City are now out of the chase for a fifth consecutive Premier League title, with his current squad being too depleted to get the results necessary to make more history in the competition.

“No,” Guardiola said when asked if he still believes Manchester City can cut down the deficit to Liverpool and win the top-flight title. “We don’t have the players. It’s more difficult. I don’t have the feeling now. Maybe it’s going to happen, who knows?”

He continued, “But I have the feeling that now we have to think in the short term. We cannot put a lot of big, big targets.

“When you want to achieve something important, like win the Premier League, arrive in the latter stages of the Champions League, how you have to behave is this one concept: consistency. All this time we were incredibly consistent and now we are not.”

Manchester City’s next opportunity to lift the spirit within the camp via a victory comes on Boxing Day, as they welcome Sean Dyche’s Everton to the Etihad Stadium with the Toffees perhaps buoyant having held Chelsea to a 0-0 draw at Goodison Park previously.