Sergio Aguero reacts on Twitter to Manchester City’s loss v Arsenal

Manuel Pellegrini insists Manchester City’s title hopes are still alive despite seeing them slip to a fifth league defeat of the season at Arsenal.

Arsenal centre-back Per Mertesacker has praised his side’s ability to play in different ways in order to pick up positive results. City have the stronger squad, Manchester United the more expensively assembled group, Leicester the momentum, Chelsea the champion players and Liverpool and Tottenham the most exciting managers.

“That is what we are doing really well at the minute”.

“You realise you earn your right to win these games and for us it is important that we realise that we have to be ready to fight like that in every single game”.

“Both teams gave everything and on our side I believe that we’ve shown spirit, organisation, brilliance and all together they gave us the three points. We demonstrated character by continuing to try and score when we were losing 2-0”.

City have lost five games this season and the last team to lose more than five games before Christmas and still win the title was Everton in 1986-87.

Wenger said: “You get used to that from Mesut Ozil, I am long enough in the game to know that to find this quality you have to travel a long way”.

City host relegation-threatened Sunderland in the league on Saturday before taking on Leicester away on December 29.

It was Arsenal’s third win on the bounce, and they showed a new found resilience as City pressed in the later stages.

“It will be a very tight game because if you look at the numbers since the start of the season, offensively and defensively the numbers are very close”.

“We have to play 63 points more”. “We are very ambitious but this league is very hard and that makes you cautious as well”. We have not had such a good chance for a few years.

“I think the way we played in the second half we are going to be an important team in fighting for the title” said the Chilean.