Silva admits City stars have been rocked & upset by sudden collapse

BERNARDO SILVA admits Manchester City are shell-shocked at their Christmas collapse.

Pep Guardiola’s defending champions have lost three of their last four games to gift wrap the title initiative to Liverpool.

The 2-1 defeat at Leicester means City now find themselves third – seven points behind Liverpool and trailing Tottenham by a point.

And defeat at the hands of the leaders next Thursday could signal the end of the line for their title defence. City’s implosion has hit the players hard according to the Portugal midfielder, who set them on their way with the opening goal against Leicester before they caved in again.

Silva said: “It’s difficult for us. No one is happy right now, as you can imagine.

“We’re upset – that’s normal. It’s not the end of the world – we have to keep going. We will try to win against Southampton and just start winning games again.

“The gap has increased to seven points. Tottenham are one ahead of us, so third position! Yeah, we just have to start winning games again.

“Even if we beat Liverpool now it won’t be easy. We have lost two games that we shouldn’t have if we are in a race for the title.

“There are a lot of games left and it’s mathematically possible, but we have to be almost perfect from now on.”

Silva, 24, says the City players will have to dig deeper than ever to call on every last bit of fight to rescue their title campaign.

He said: “It’s all about character for the players now. When you are in a bad moment, it’s always a difficult thing to do.

“Since I’ve been here, this team has reacted well to bad situations. When we lost, we would win the next game but now, to lose two games in a row, is not easy for us.

“But we will come back from this. We know in the dressing room that things aren’t going as we want them to, but we have to show heart and improve and come back from this.”

Silva says the magnitude of just what has happened over the festive period is not lost on the dressing room.

“This is a tough time – we cannot deny it. To lose three of the last four is not good for us. We were two points ahead of Liverpool and now we are seven behind so, yeah, it’s not a good moment,” he said.

“So, we have to sort out what mistakes we have made and try to improve and not make them in the next games. We need to start winning again as fast as we can.”

Silva says the City players won’t be pointing to a catalogue of recent injuries as a factor behind the wheels coming off their campaign.

He added: “No, we have no excuses. We have injuries but we don’t want to create those kind of excuses.

“We always have a good atmosphere in our dressing room. That’s important.

“We’ve got to sort out the mistakes we’ve been making and try to correct them – starting with Southampton.”