Nerves hurt us but we CAN close gap, says boss

PEP GUARDIOLA admitted nerves overwhelmed Manchester City and that the Premier League champions have a mountain to climb in the title race. City’s shock defeat leaves Liverpool eight points clear at the top of the Premier League. ‘We got a little bit nervous,’ said City manager Guardiola (below). ‘It is a lot of points. Liverpool don’t drop many points. It is better not to think that one team is eight points ahead. The distance is big — I know that. But we are in October, still a lot of games and competitions. ‘We told the players, “Come on guys, a lot of games to play, we did it and we’re going to do it again”.’ City were without the injured Aymeric Laporte, John Stones, Leroy Sane and Kevin De Bruyne and it showed. Ilkay Gundogan agreed with his manager that City were anxious in and out of possession, failing to find the net in a home league game for the first time since May 2018. ‘We should have played better,’ said Gundogan. ‘Wolves did well but we know how we can play and our qualities. We could not put that on the pitch and it hurts. The spaces were tiny. It was very difficult to play. When you are not able to score the first goal, maybe we get nervous and don’t 100 per cent feel the confidence is there. ‘The challenge now is to learn from that. When you are in front and top of the table, it feels great to look at it. Now it is tougher to look at it, there is quite a gap already and none of us are watching the table now. We will get opportunities in the coming months but at the moment it is something we have to live with.’ Guardiola added: ‘We lost to a good team that were really well organised, good physicality, strong in the air and so fast on the counter-attack.’ But the Catalan maintained that City are not playing poorly and insisted his players will bounce back. ‘I know these guys,’ he added. ‘Still they are incredibly involved and can do it. What happened, happened. ‘Most of the teams who won the title in the past don’t win it the year after. We were not at our level today. The previous games were good. It was a bad day. We started quite well but we conceded two situations in our build-up where it’s impossible to defend.’