Manchester City’s Struggles and Guardiola’s Reality Check

Manchester City managed to end a streak of seven games without a win (six losses) with a 3-0 victory over Nottingham Forest at the beginning of the month. However, since then, they stumbled with a draw against Crystal Palace and in their last two matches lost to Juventus in the Champions League and to Manchester United in the derby, which turned into a 2-1 defeat in the 88th and 90th minutes, dropping them to fifth place in the Premier League.

Now, ahead of their match against Aston Villa tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, 14:30, Sport1) which will open the 17th round of the Premier League, Pep Guardiola admitted that his team isn’t even thinking about returning to the title race.

“We need to understand and tell ourselves that everything we did in recent years simply doesn’t count,” Guardiola said in an interview with TNT. “We need to understand that it’s over and start rethinking the situation, clear our heads and understand that we’re in a difficult position right now. We can talk and tell stories about how good we were, but that won’t help us get back to winning games.”