Pellegrini: Less than 80 points may win title

Manuel Pellegrini believes Manchester City showed the spirit they will need to maintain their Premier League title challenge after securing a late 2-1 win over Swansea.

City have already lost four times and but for Kelechi Iheanoacho’s unintended deflection of Yaya Toure’s 92nd-minute shot that broke Swansea’s hearts, they would have dropped more points on Saturday.

“It’s important to keep clean sheet but it’s also important for the team to win this kind of game”. In midweek we were fighting and running a lot against Borussia but I think it was good to win this game.

– Wilfried Bony has scored five goals in the last four Premier League meetings between Manchester City and Swansea, (three for Swansea, two for Man City).

“It was a very important week, a very critical moment in the Premier League because we played very bad against Stoke [in a 2-0 loss last weekend] and a very important achievement to finish at the top of the group in the Champions League”.

“It is a very hard title to win because the amount of points all the teams have now is not normal”, said Pellegrini, whose memory may not be what it was.

Winning the European Cup is regarded as the biggest achievement for managers and players alike and City’s billionaire owner Sheikh Mansour considers it the holy grail of football. We are all used to managers leaving because sadly that has always been part of the game. City chose to rest De Bruyne pairing Silva Navas and Sterling ahead of Toure and Ferdandhino.

The victory moved City back to the top of the table, although Arsenal will replace them on Sunday with a victory at bottom club Aston Villa, while Leicester will have the opportunity to regain first place for themselves when they host Chelsea on Monday.

It was a contrasting experience for the second Manchester team as City escaped with three points at Etihad Stadium, against Swansea City.

Swansea City were coming into this game with Alan Curtis taking over as interim manager of the club, after the club parted ways with former-manager Garry Monk on Wednesday. “2-1” – Gary Lineker has a ligh-hearted view on Yaya Toure’s stoppage-time victor as the Ivorian “spoiled” the binary of Premier League results.

The Welsh outfit headed into their clash with Manchester City with just one win in 11 matches, a run which cost Gary Monk his job as owner Huw Jenkins seeks a change of direction. The 23-year-old Belgian striker has scored 15 goals in all competitions for Everton this season, and has been in rich vein of form in the last two months, managing eight goals in last seven games for the Toffees.