Guardiola Concedes Premier League Title To Liverpool As Manchester City Fall 22 Points Behind Leaders

Pep Guardiola conceded the title on Sunday night after locking his players in the dressing room for nearly an hour following their defeat at Tottenham

The loss, courtesy of Steven Bergwijn’s debut goal and Heung-min Son’s strike after Manchester City were reduced to 10 men following Oleksandr Zinchenko’s red card, leaves Guardiola’s side 22 points adrift of leaders Liverpool.

And the Etihad boss has for the first time accepted defeat in their attempts to win a third consecutive title.

Guardiola initially nodded when asked if the title race was over before saying: ‘They are far away so they are unstoppable. They have a lot of points, we have dropped points quite similar to today.

‘Our targets are to win the remaining competitions and qualify for the Champions League next season.’

City were dominant before Zinchenko picked up a second yellow card to change the direction of the game.

Nevertheless, Guardiola kept his crestfallen players in the away dressing room for around 50 minutes after the loss as he held an instant inquest into the defeat.

‘No, I was not angry. Normally I don’t like it if we don’t play good, if we don’t run or we don’t fight,’ said Guardiola.

‘Never when we lose do I stay away from my players because I know them. But we lost the game so we talked about how to move forward and keep going. There’s a lot of months to play.’

Guardiola also took a thinly-veiled swipe at former Premier League chairman Richard Scudamore, who expressed concerns that City’s dominance could affect the division’s credibility ahead of last season after winning the title by 19 points in the previous campaign.

‘The last two seasons they said City winning the title was bad for the Premier League and that it could not happen again,’ said the City boss.

They said someone has to stop City getting 100 points and winning it again. So now it is Liverpool you have to be concerned with about the Premier League.’

Source:Daily Mail