It is being reported today that the new Man City manager Pep Guardiola thinks that his team are now effectively out of the title race after losing to Everton yesterday. The Cityzens are 10 points behind Chelsea, whereas Arsenal are just 2 points above them in 4th spot.
Guardiola may have given up (and it will certainly be interesting to watch them next week against Tottenham) but our goalkeeper Petr Cech thinks quite the opposite, and points out that we still have games to face against all our title rivals, and if we win them all we can close the gap at the top.
“Our away form was brilliant at the start of the season – or most of the time,” Cech said.
“We had a loss at Everton and suddenly we had another two games where we dropped points. But we gave the right answer here that it doesn’t matter.
“You have to carry on, get ready and there are a lot of games to be played.
“We have to play everybody who is around us, so we can take points from them. So we are in a good position.”
Cech was also pleased that we went on to score 4 goals yesterday, as well as keeping a clean sheet, and thinks that goal difference could be a big factor come the end of the season. Chelsea are currently on +30, Spurs on +29, we are on +26 with Liverpool just behind on +25. No-one else is close with Man City on just +15 after yesterday’s 4-0 setback.
Cech cautioned:”Every time you can score more goals you should try to do so,”
“That is because every goal will be important when you see how tight it is in the top five places.
“Every goal might count so we try to make sure, when we can, to continue to search for more goals.
“And we wanted to make sure that at 3-0 and 4-0 we didn’t concede.”
It’s good that Petr is in confident and positive mood, but as Pep said when asked if City were too far behind Chelsea “Yes. Ten is a lot of points.”
We are only 8 points behind. Is that too many points? Or is Cech right and we have ample time to make up the gap?