Pep Guardiola claims the Premier League title race still isn’t over, despite Manchester City’s comfortable midweek victory over Arsenal.
At the time of writing, Arsenal sit top of the Premier League, but they’re far from the favourites to win the competition.
Unfortunately, Manchester City are just two points back with two games in hand and a far superior goal difference.
They’d need to lose one and draw one of their final seven matches to let Arsenal back in, even if the Gunners can manage a perfect record in their own final five games. Any further dropped points for Mikel Arteta’s side will only make it more difficult.
Yet speaking in his press conference ahead of their Sunday game against Fulham, Pep Guardiola insisted the job isn’t done yet.
“When people say it’s over, it’s not over,” Guardiola said. “When it’s over, it’ll be over, but it’s not.
“Still we have seven games, Goodison Park how aggressive [Everton] were, and in every single game we play there and the opponent play for special things.
“Now we have to go to Fulham and win at a special stadium against an organised team. If we do our job we’re the closest but nothing is taken for granted. We were happy of course with the Arsenal result but that’s all, the day after it’s preparing for Fulham.”
If City can stay focused for the remainder of the campaign, the title is certainly in their hands.
They have a couple of tricky fixtures remaining, most notably an away trip to Brighton in the final midweek. But in their current form, they’ll believe they can beat anyone.
Guardiola will keep telling everyone the job isn’t over to try and keep his players on task, but most of us will only believe him if his team ever start dropping points.