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Manchester City cannot think about winning a fifth consecutive Premier League title, manager Pep Guardiola said, with the team mired in a run of poor performances.
Guardiola’s side had to settle for a point in a 2-2 league draw with Crystal Palace on Saturday, twice coming back from a goal down and losing Rico Lewis to a red card late in the game, to remain fourth in the standings.
“We take a point. We fought incredible and came back twice. It’s a season to suffer. We’ll see what happens in the last months,” Guardiola said. “We cannot talk about the title race when we lose four games in a row and draw. We’ll try to recover players. We’ll see in the last month.”
Lewis and Erling Haaland scored in the draw that had Guardiola speaking with pride about his players’ resilience with his side still missing a number of key players through injury and illness.
“We have many important players injured — many players with many minutes but the physicality is there — but we were there, and we did everything we could to win, and I am so pleased and proud of the players,” the Spaniard said.
Manuel Akanji and Nathan Aké were the latest to join City’s list of absentees, sidelined after injuries suffered in their 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest on Wednesday. Phil Foden sat out his second successive game with bronchitis.
The draw, however, felt like a loss in terms of City’s chances of remaining in the title fight.
“With Man City it’s always two points lost,” City midfielder Bernardo Silva said. “One point is better than zero but we’re not happy at the moment. We know our situation with injuries. Coming to Crystal Palace is never easy but we have to do better.
“When I finish a game and I get a point I’m not happy. It’s not the way we built this team, it’s not our standard. We’re in December. We’d like to be in a different position. If we recover our players quickly we can always do it. But right now our concern is a different one.
“If we’re fourth or fifth we have to look at winning the next game. The last month and a half have not been good enough.”
Next up for Man City is a big Champions League game against Juventus on Dec. 11.
Information from Reuters was used in this story.