Toure calls on old title spirit

YAYA TOURE has called on Manchester City to recreate the spirit of 2014 and achieve the seemingly impossible by overhauling Chelsea to win the league.

City have won their past four league matches – and are unbeaten in nine games in all competitions – but face a huge task to catch Antonio Conte’s leaders.

Toure, below, takes hope from their unlikely title win of three seasons ago, when they came from nine points behind Liverpool with five games to play.

The midfielder knows that it would need Chelsea to stumble badly, just as Brendan Rodgers’ side did, but he said: “We just hope. The Premier League this year is very demanding and very difficult.

“When you see Chelsea play, they show confidence and they are strong. We expect them to slip up, maybe a couple of times.

“But they have good momentum and they also play fewer games than nearly all of the other teams in the top four because they are not in Europe. That is a big advantage.

“But we just have to believe, because we did that in 2014. Yeah, we have to hope it’s possible again.”

City have not topped the table since the first week of November but Sunday’s 2-0 win at Sunderland lifted them back to third place. They dropped as low as fifth in January after a poor run of results but appear to have stabilised again.

Sergio Aguero, whose future at the club has been questioned repeatedly recently, has re-established himself after a foot injury to new signing Gabriel Jesus.

The Argentina striker took his goal tally to five in three games with his first-half opener at the Stadium of Light.

Toure said: “People were saying: ‘Is this the end of Aguero?’ But now he is showing he’s one of the best strikers in the world. It’s so hard to keep him quiet.”