{"id":29507,"date":"2025-11-09T21:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T21:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/29507\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T21:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T21:26:09","slug":"pep-guardiola-feels-man-city-proved-they-are-title-challengers-against-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/29507\/","title":{"rendered":"Pep Guardiola feels Man City proved they are title challengers against Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arne Slot\u2019s side were swept aside by City at the Etihad via goals from Erling Haaland, Nico Gonzalez and the outstanding Jeremy Doku, and although Liverpool had a strong case Virgil van Dijk\u2019s disallowed header should have stood, there was no denying they were second best.<\/p>\n

The win sees City move up to second, four points behind Arsenal after their 2-2 draw at Sunderland on Saturday, with a fifth league win in six suggesting they are back in the mix after finishing 13 points behind Liverpool last term.<\/p>\n

\"NicoManchester City eased to victory (Nick Potts\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to the players, \u2018Don\u2019t do it because yesterday Arsenal didn\u2019t win, do it because we believe in ourselves that we can play against the champions of England and show they we are ready to be there with him this season\u2019,\u201d Guardiola said.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday we proved it, we did it \u2013 especially in the first half.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while Guardiola can think of putting pressure on Mikel Arteta\u2019s Gunners after the international break, Arne Slot admitted Liverpool cannot spend time thinking about the title race until they have fixed the issues which have seen them lose five of 11 in the league to fall eight points off the pace.<\/p>\n

Slot is still trying to assimilate \u00a3200million worth of summer signings into his squad, with every metric so far suggesting they have regressed rather than progressed from the side that won the league by 10 points last term.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Five defeats) feels too many,\u201d Slot said. \u201cThe last thing I should speak about is the title race. We should focus on getting results before we can even think about that. The reality is we are eighth now. One team is quite far ahead, City are four points behind Arsenal.<\/p>\n

\"ArneArne Slot\u2019s side were well beaten (Nick Potts\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cI said last season many times, even when we were leading, the best time to judge the league is of course after 38 games and then next best is after 19 games because you have played all the opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first focus should be on getting results and the last thing we should focus on is the title race\u2026We need to improve, that is obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n

After missing an early penalty, Haaland headed City into a 29th-minute lead.<\/p>\n

Van Dijk appeared to level with Liverpool\u2019s first notable attempt at goal but Andy Robertson was offside when he ducked out of his header\u2019s path, and was judged to have impeded Gianluigi Donnarumma.<\/p>\n

Slot said in his post-match Sky Sports interview it was \u201cobvious and clear the wrong decision has been made\u201d but was more restrained in the press conference room.<\/p>\n

\"VirgilVirgil van Dijk\u2019s goal was disallowed (Nick Potts\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to emphasise that being 2-0 down at half-time was a fair reflection of how the game went,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I have been on the opposite side when we have been much better and 1-0 up and maybe not scoring the second one and then the opposition make it 1-1 and things change.<\/p>\n

\u201c1-1 would have been the biggest gift at half-time because the second half was a different game. But being 2-0 down and later 3-0 down doesn\u2019t give a good reflection of how things would have gone if it had been 1-0.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arne Slot\u2019s side were swept aside by City at the Etihad via goals from Erling Haaland, Nico Gonzalez…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-29507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}