Man City: Pep Guardiola makes Premier League title claim as he admits ‘bad selection’ vs West Ham | OneFootball

Manchester City head coach Pep Guardiola has made a Premier League title claim after his side’s disappointing draw against West Ham.

Man City‘s Premier League title hopes were dealt a blow on Saturday as they were held to a 1-1 draw against West Ham, while table-toppers Arsenal beat Everton.

Guardiola‘s side have now drawn two straight games and sit nine points adrift of Arsenal with a game in hand. They will also likely be eliminated from the Champions League next week as they trail Real Madrid 3-0 on aggregate heading into their round of 16 second leg.

It has been widely conceded that Man City’s Premier League title challenge is now all but over, but Guardiola thinks they can still beat Arsenal to finish first.

“It’s not over. Who said that? We didn’t lose. We will continue,” Guardiola said after Man City’s draw against West Ham.

“Nine points is a lot against Arsenal but it happened. We have the game at home so we have to try until the end. When it is not possible then we congratulate the champion but we have to try.”

He added: “We have an incredible team, spirit. We had an incredible amount of effort in Madrid. The last two games, we played much, much better.

“We are an incredible team. We play so good. The guys go and go until we can’t continue. But we didn’t score enough goals when we had the quality and they punished us.”

Guardiola has also revealed what he thinks Man City have “struggled” to do this season.

“We didn’t score enough goals. It happened a thousand millions times for this team in the last decade but this season we struggled,” Guardiola admitted.

“We were without much threat and I don’t like that. You need the spark in the final third with your players. To win the Premier League you need to be more consistent.

“In the past we had the consistency to win and win and win, to always find a way. This season, not scoring goals for the amount of chances we’ve created, we’ve been punished.”

And Guardiola admitted that he was wrong not to start summer signing Rayan Cherki against West Ham and explained why he made this “bad selection”.

“Now you can criticise me incredibly, for the selection, now I deserve it,” Guardiola said.

“It’s sometimes for the balance. We learned in the beginning (this season) that when we played Erling with Jeremy [Doku] or Cherki that we are incredibly unbalanced, we do not have the stability that teams in the Premier League have to have.”

He continued: “It’s a team that is growing, I think that from the beginning we’ve grown a lot but still it is not finished business. It is like that sometimes but I will not say that I don’t love playing with Rayan, especially when he came from the bench, always the impact is unbelievable.

“But sometimes he has not the speed, the team is always stable when Semenyo and Nico O’Reilly play in the winger position and go inside, arrive to the box, they are really, really good. I’m finding still the best way to have stability and consistency in the team.”