Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has conceded that his side are out of the title picture this season.
The Citizens faced a collapse against Everton at the Goodison Park on Sunday as they were thrashed 4-0 by Ronald Koeman’s side.
City are now 10 points behind league leaders Chelsea after 21 games in the Premier League.
Manchester City have been struggling and with current form even a top-four finish looks highly unlikely for the Etihad Stadium outfit.
However, Pep Guardiola feels next weeks game against in-form Tottenham Hotspurs could be the changing point in City’s otherwise average season.
“The first one [Chelsea], yeah. The first one, 10 points is a lot of points of course,” he said at the post-match press conference at the Goodison Park when questioned about the point difference wih Chelsea.
“The second one is three points [Tottenham], so we have to see.”
“I spoke to my players for the last three weeks or a month, saying forget about the table – focus on the next game and try to do our best, do what we need to do to win the game.”
“After that, at the end of the season we are going to evaluate how was our level, how was our performance, how was the coach, how was the players. Then after we are going to decide.”
Claudio Bravo faced further ire as the City stopper let past all four of Everton’s on-target shots.
Howver, Guardiola was quick to defend Bravo as he claimed that it was a collective failure of the team and not just the Chile stopper’s fault.
“Of course [this is] the first time in my life I received a lot of goals. It never happened before and that is why I have to know the reason why,” said the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss, before admitting that he would change his preferred style to look for alternatives.
“To control the game, from my point of view, means to control the ball,” he explained. “In many cases, I know the people do not agree with me but the control means you have possession of the ball to create enough chances to score a goal and concede as few as possible.”
“That happened, but what happened when Everton with their first chance it is a goal. It is a pass from Gael [Clichy] inside, we lose the ball and [Everton score with] a counter attack. We don’t hold the line, the pass comes back and [Romelu] Lukaku scores the goal.”
“To avoid that you put the ball there – up. After that you lose the ball because our strikers are our strikers and you have 10 players behind. Maybe we’ll be solid but I don’t believe in that. I would like to play every time better and better and feel that when we arrive we are able to score goals.”