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EPL: My feeling today is we’ll win the Premier League — Pep Guardiola

Pep Guardiola strongly believes that Manchester City will retain the Premier League title despite a run of three consecutive draws which has left them three points behind leaders Arsenal.

Guardiola’s side suffered their latest setback on Sunday when Dejan Kulusevski’s late equaliser secured a 3-3 draw for Tottenham at the Etihad Stadium, after which the club was hit with an FA charge for failing to control their players.

Guardiola defended the behaviour of his players in his press conference ahead of Wednesday’s trip to Aston Villa and insisted he remains confident that Manchester City will triumph in the title race.

Asked whether City could use the controversy of the Tottenham game as motivation, Guardiola said: “No, I never use these kinds of situations. Today, the motivation is to try to do it better. Sometimes the decisions help, and sometimes they don’t.

“I learned from where I come from that, if you want to win something, you have to do much, much better than your opponents.

“When you are level, you always have the feeling that it’s not going to happen, so you have to do much, much better. This is what you have to do.

“My feeling today is we are going to win the Premier League. If you ask me, we are going to win the Premier League. If we play at the level we played against Liverpool and Tottenham, we are going to win it again.

“The people don’t believe it already because of three draws, but we are going to do it again, knowing that it is not easy because no team has done it yet [won four titles in a row].

“That’s why the difficulty is there. But if you ask me today, ‘what are you feeling?’ We are going to do it again.”

City has appeared uncharacteristically vulnerable defensively lately, conceding eight goals in their last three Premier League games against Spurs, Liverpool and Chelsea.

But, despite the goals conceded, Guardiola insists he has no concerns over their performance levels, suggesting their underlying numbers, in terms of chances conceded, are as encouraging as ever.

“I’m concerned about the goals conceded, definitely. Of course, I am.

“But I’m saying that the average is lower than last season, the chances conceded in every single game except the Chelsea game.

“Chelsea created more than usual, but in the rest of the games, it’s the same level as in the previous seasons when we won a lot of titles.

“We are at the same level as last season and in previous seasons in terms of the chances created as well. Even, I would say, a little bit higher.”

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