City can hit top form again, says Pep

Pep Guardiola says struggling Manchester City can hit the heights of recent seasons once he has all his top players back despite their alarming slump.

The defending Premier League champions have lost six of their past seven games in all com-petitions – falling 11 points behind leaders Liverpool in the English top flight.

It is an extraordinary collapse for a team that have won six of the past seven Premier League titles, including the past four.

Guardiola, whose team host Nottingham Forest on Wednesday, told a pre-match press con-ference he was confident City’s decline is not terminal.

“With all the squad this season, we’ll be close to the level that we reached last season,” he said yesterday.

The club have been beset by injury problems this season, most notably the loss of Ballon d’Or winner Rodri for the rest of the campaign. A number of other key players have spent time in the treatment room including Kyle Walker, Jack Grealish, Kevin De Bruyne, Mateo Kovacic and Ruben Dias. Guardiola described City as “magnificent” at Liverpool on Sunday despite their 2-0 defeat. “I would say we are not far away from the team second in the Premier League (City are two points behind Arsenal),” he said.

“But always it’s the way you play, the consistency you have in the boxes, and many things that give you the positive thoughts of what is going to happen in future.”

Guardiola said the club would talk “internally” over whether they would bolster the squad in next month’s transfer window. And he confirmed that Ederson remained his No 1 goalkeeper after he was dropped for the Liv-erpool match in favour of understudy Stefan Ortega following a mistake in last week’s 3-3 draw against Feyenoord.

He said the Brazilian had reacted well to his decision.

“Ederson No 1, Stefan No 2,” he said. “But maybe Stefan continues. We’ll see tomorrow and the next games.”

Guardiola called on City’s fans to help lift the team against Forest, who are sixth in the table, a point behind his men.

“Many, many good moments we’ve lived together,” he said. “They know that we need absolute support because all of us, the players especially, are human beings.”