Micah Richards has explained one factor that could ‘hamper’ Manchester City’s title hopes this season.
The Sky Blues are currently one point ahead of Liverpool at the top of the table after their 4-0 defeat of Leeds United at Elland Road yesterday after Jurgen Klopp’s side had earlier defeated Newcastle United.
The ex-City man has claimed City’s confidence may be knocked if they don’t make it through to the Champions League final and that could therefore affect how they finish the Premier League campaign.
“You’d rather have the points on the board, of course. But we’ve seen today, sometimes it can spur you on. You never know, the Premier League is so unpredictable. Both teams will win all their remaining fixtures,” the ex-City man told Sky Sports (via the Liverpool Echo).
“Liverpool, with their strength in depth. There might be one slip-up. Liverpool winning today and City today, I think they’ll win all of them.
“You don’t want to see Bayern Munich winning 10 in a row. You don’t want that in the Premier League. The only thing is, if Man City were to go out in the Champions League, that could knock the confidence.
“It knocks the stuffing out of you. That’s the only thing I see hampering City. The standards City and Liverpool are setting now. In my opinion, two of the best teams the Premier League have ever seen.”
The Etihad outfit head into next week’s Champions League semi-final second leg clash with Real Madrid with a 4-3 lead.
They will be right up against it in the Spanish capital and will have to be at their best if they’re wanting to knock the 12-time winners out.
If City progress, it’s likely that they’ll meet Liverpool in the final after we picked up a 2-0 first-leg win over Villarreal earlier this week at Anfield.
With just four Premier League games remaining, we urgently need someone to take points from the Cityzens to offer us the chance of replacing them at the top.
Newcastle, Wolves and West Ham are the next three sides that Pep Guardiola’s side will face in the Premier League with their final game of the season coming at the Etihad against Steven Gerrard’s Aston Villa.
How nice would it be to see our former skipper help us out one more time?
Sadly, you’d expect City to take maximum points from those games but stranger things have happened in football.
We just need to focus on ourselves and remember that we’re still fighting for another two trophies in addition to the league title.
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