‘They won the battle but we can still win the war’
PEP Guardiola congratulated United on their derby victory before pointing out that his City side remain in the driving seat to win the Premier League title.
The Blues’ 21-match winning streak was ended on a disappointing afternoon at the Etihad as they missed the chance to stretch their lead at the top with an underpar performance in a 2-0 defeat.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and United players afterwards indicated the Blues are still too far ahead to think about catching them, and while Guardiola won’t rule anything out, he emphasised the strength of the position his side are in.
“In football, everything can happen. Everything can happen. We can win the next game and lose the next games,” said the Blues boss.
“That’s why when people say Pep always says the same after so many victories in a row it is because I know everything can happen.
“We have done incredibly. Today the news is that we lost, so congratulations to
Man United for the victory, but we are trying to win the Premier League and we need six or seven victories from 10 games.
“When you arrive to the last 10 games, everything is going to be shorter.
“Our opponents have to win all their games and we have to lose four.”
Kevin de Bruyne admitted City played into United hands early on and the defeat meant Guardiola’s selection faced scrutiny for the first time in a while.
However, the manager would not labour on whether it was a mistake not to introduce record scorer Sergio Aguero from the bench while the Blues were chasing goals, while insisting that his players would not need a postmortem on their first defeat in four months isntead treating it like any other game.
City are back at the Etihad on Wednesday to face Southampton.
“What we have to do is recover, tomorrow I will not speak with the team, the day after tomorrow I will not speak with the team, and the day of the game I will tell the team how incredible they are because they way they played until the end, considering United are fantastic - no defeats away for a year shows how strong they are,” said Guardiola.
“Having that margin now it is in our hands.
“We come back with what we have to do, new fresh legs on Wednesday and try to do another game.
“I’m not going to analyse this game thinking we were perfect in the last 21 games. Always there are problems when we win or lose, but I am pretty sure like we have done after winning games we think about the next one.
“The way Southampton play is completely different to United and we are going to decide the way we want to play and try to do it.”