Pep Guardiola has warned Manchester City have no chance of chasing down Arsenal in the Premier League title race unless they can find a way to consistently address their second-half slumps.
After watching the Gunners ease to a 3-0 win over Sunderland on Saturday, City faced the prospect of sitting nine points behind the league leaders on Sunday evening when they took on Liverpool at Anfield.
Guardiola’s side have developed an unwanted habit of falling asleep in the second-half of games, scoring less goals, squandering more chances and dropping 11 points since the turn of the year – most notably against Tottenham at the start of the month.
They bucked that trend on Merseyside with goals from Bernardo Silva and Erling Haaland securing a comeback victory that reduced the gap back to six points, putting pressure on Mikel Arteta’s side once again.
City will be just three points behind if they beat Fulham on Wednesday night with Arsenal in action away to Brentford the following day.
While title talk at the Etihad has been ignited somewhat, Guardiola has warned City ‘will not win’ against Fulham or any other side unless they can start going the distance in games again.
Asked how much of a difference Sunday’s developments have had, Guardiola told a press conference on Tuesday: ‘I understand your question. Every time in the last weeks when I go before the game in flash interviews, always is you lose you’re losing everything and going to disappear from planet Earth.
‘What I’m saying is what do we have to do to beat Fulham? What do we have to do better to make the second half closer to the first? What is the reason why in the second half we are still dropping our performances?
‘If we don’t improve that, we will not win – maybe if not against Fulham, against Newcastle or the next [game].
‘I understand how nice three points or nine points and this kind of stuff is, but it doesn’t make for winning titles or arriving at the latter stages to be close to fighting for titles.’
Over the years, City have been able to put together wonderful runs of form to get them over the line. But with key figures from those teams like Kevin de Bruyne, Kyle Walker and Ilkay Gundogan no longer around, Guardiola is still to be convinced this current City side can reach those levels.
‘When we have 60 or 70 per cent of new players, we don’t have what we had in the past right now,’ he said.
‘After the second or third season we had done it, we are able to do it but now we have to prove it. I don’t know if we are able to win three, four, five, six games in a row. I don’t know.’