Pep Guardiola has warned his Manchester City side a failure to beat Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium on Thursday would effectively mean their title challenge is “over.”
Reigning champions City on Sunday revived their bid to retain the English Premier League trophy with a 3-1 win away to Southampton that followed shock defeats by Crystal Palace and Leicester City.
However, the victory at St Mary’s still left City seven points behind leaders Liverpool and for a while it seemed Guardiola’s side might drop more points on the south coast.
Photo: Reuters
David Silva put City ahead after 10 minutes, but they then squandered several chances and gifted Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg a 37th-minute equalizer, but the uncertainty that crept into City’s play was ended by a James Ward-Prowse own-goal and a Sergio Aguero header just before halftime that left City 3-1 up.
Saints’ frustrations boiled over with a red card for Hojbjerg after a wild challenge on Fernandinho late in the game.
“We knew it, that with the position of Liverpool, if we drop points then it is over, it [the title race] is finished,” Guardiola said. “It would be almost impossible. Of course, they are going to drop points, but not too many. If you want to be there as far as possible until the end we have to remember what happened last season and this as well — apart from the last few days.”
Guardiola was adamant he had not lost confidence in his side, despite the Palace and Leicester reverses.
“How can I doubt them?” he said. “Football is like this. We make 30 exceptional minutes again, especially without the ball, we create chances to go 2-0 or 3-0, we concede one goal. Against Crystal Palace and Leicester they were happy with 1-1 and they found a second one, I always judge our intentions of the game and always our intentions are to try.”
“We won a lot of games, but unfortunately we lost two and we have a rival [Liverpool] who at the moment is the best team in Europe, or in the world,” he said. “That’s why it’s a challenge for us next Thursday, to try and win, and sustain this position as far as possible to arrive at the end of the season fighting for the title.”
City could again be without Kevin de Bruyne against Liverpool because of the influential playmaker’s muscle problem, but Guardiola rejected suggestions that a defeat of Southampton had sent a message to Juergen Klopp’s Liverpool.
“We’re not here to send a message,” he said. “Liverpool know what they have to do, we know what we have to do next Thursday. I know the distance is big, seven points, especially because they’re so solid and consistent, but we’re at home.”
“Hopefully, our people at the Etihad can help, they can support us,” he added. “Not just for the game, but these players deserve it. What they have done in the last 14 or 15 months, how they defend this club, is incredible, it’s massive.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier