Guardiola believes first defeat will be good for Blues

PEP Guardiola claims a first defeat of the season will be good for City – and is confident there will be no hangover when they head to Old Trafford on Sunday.

The runaway Premier League leaders saw a 20-game winning run come to an end against Shakhtar Donetsk – losing 2-1 in Kharkiv last night.

They face United this weekend in a game that looks pivotal to the title race.

And Guardiola believes City will bounce back from their first setback in what has been an outstanding start to the campaign.

“We needed to lose a game, it will be good for the club, for all of us and the media,” he said.

“People say things when you win a lot and you can forget that now.”

Guardiola named a muchchanged side, but still fielded a starting XI that cost more than £280m to assemble. “It hurts,” he added. “It is never nice to lose a game.

“We played to win until the end. Now it’s about recovery and preparing for the next game.

“We lose a game despite our professionalism.

“We have said many times we cannot win all the time, we are going to lose games.

“Today was the first. Now we have to recover, it is another competition, the Premier League.

“We had done the job one month ago.

“We saw many good things. We made mistakes and we are going to improve on that.

“Football is how you recover in the good moments and bad moments to stay stable.

“Now we prepare for Sunday and then after that think about Swansea and Tottenham.

“The world is not going to finish on Sunday.

“It doesn’t matter what is going to happen.”

Meanwhile, Shakhtar manager Paulo Fonseca turned up for his post-match press conference in a full Zorro outfit after promising to wear the costume if his side could overcome City.

Bernardo Silva admitted defeat had stung City’s players.

“In the second half we tried to come back, had our chances, but we are not happy,” he said.

“Even though we had already qualified, we wanted the three points.

“We will try our best to win all the competitions.

“Today it was a big opportunity for most of the players that are not playing as much as the others. I hope we can win at the weekend, this is a really important match for us. We have played against some amazing teams this season, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal and we did well.

“In the Champions League you never know what will happen.” Gabriel Jesus challenges for the ball with Shakhtar’s Ivan Ordets during the Champions League defeat last night; Below, Shakhtar manager Paulo Fonseca dressed as Zorro for the post-match press conference