Pep Guardiola has fired a warning to current Premier League leaders Liverpool following Manchester City’s winning return to domestic action on Wednesday night.
Their first game after last week’s Club World Cup triumph in Saudi Arabia saw them come from a goal down at half-time to beat Everton 3-1 at Goodison Park, albeit with a little help from a very harsh penalty decision against Amadou Onana for an apparent handball.
The result moves the champions within five points of the Reds and with a game in hand, and their manager intends to ‘remind’ the contenders to their throne that they have ‘standards’ to maintain from winning five out of the last six league titles.
Speaking after City’s comeback win over the Toffees, Guardiola said (via football.london): “That’s why we are the world champion, the best team of the world. Now I’m going to remind them every day. We have standards to keep. We cannot let the standards go down.”
City will remain many punters’ favourites to win another Premier League title, given that they Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne to come back from injury, as well as their track record for putting together extended winning sequences in the second half of previous campaigns.
However, the difference from this season to last is that they have Liverpool as a direct rival, with Jurgen Klopp’s side the only other team to claim domestic supremacy since 2017 and twice taking Guardiola’s men to the final day in that period.
Nobody else has put together such a sustained challenge to the Cityzens during the 52-year-old’s reign at the Etihad Stadium, and the Reds have shown their own powers of recovery on multiple occasions this term – sometimes doing so despite being reduced to 10 men.
LFC will be prepared for City to hit the accelerator from January onwards, having done so to our cost a couple of times, but they can also expect us to push them every step of the way if they are to embark on a post-New Year surge.
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