EPL: Manchester City frustrated by resilient Stoke

It backfired, with City only looking like breaking down Stoke after Guardiola threw on Silva as a substitute with just under an hour gone. If the league leaders don’t slip up against lesser opposition they can afford to lose to both City and Man United and still canter to the Premier League.

“We can improve. I’m happy because we’re winning games and that helps us a lot in many things”.

And the Brazil worldwide says the next month will decide who finishes the season in top spot. We’d worked on it over the past couple of days, making sure we got numbers behind the ball.

“We tried. When you analyse the chances we had, especially in the last moments, how they had, we had in the first-half one when Gaël [Clichy] slipped but the others, I don’t remember another one”.

City found greater direction after the second-half introduction of playmaker Silva but the Spaniard missed a good chance while Sergio Aguero, Leroy Sane and Yaya Toure were also unable to take opportunities.

“The rotations are good when you have successful results and they are not brilliant when you miss out”.

He said: “We have to be focused game by game”. We hope to see more of that soon. We are going to fight for the next games.

Stoke will be backed by at least 1,000 supporters – including a contingent from Mark Hughes’s first team plus senior staff – in what is expected to be a full house at the 7,000-capacity Academy Stadium a short walk over a bridge away from the Etihad Stadium.

“I’d prefer to be in the position of Chelsea by far”, he said. If this was an opportunity to apply a little pressure to Antonio Conte’s team, it passed them by.

There is a lot of mutual respect.

Hang on, Man City were playing tonight?

Raheem Sterling has been in fine form since the start of the season but the emergence of Leroy Sane on the other wing provided the City team with two unsafe wide threats that scored goals and stretched the opposition, providing space for the central players to work their magic.

You’ve got to respect every team and from being a team that could have won the title, all of a sudden, they are out of it..