Man City 'excellent' against Crystal Palace – Guardiola backs misfiring stars as Dias demands improvement

Manchester City have drawn their past three Premier League home games having led all of them, a damaging and potentially decisive slump in their bid for an unprecedented fourth consecutive title.

Pep Guardiola’s verdict on those performances against Liverpool, Tottenham and Crystal Palace? “Excellent”.

The treble-winners are in Saudi Arabia this week to contest the FIFA Cup World Cup, meaning a scheduled Premier League home match against Brentford will be rearranged. By the time Guardiola’s men return to domestic action away to Everton on December 27 they could be as low as sixth in the table. 

“We have to win games to make it depend on ourselves,” Guardiola said. “It's not the [time] to think about what [Liverpool] do and what would be possible. 

“I have the feeling that the last three games we played here where we dropped points we were excellent, but the reality is three points. 

“We could not win but the performance was really good. At the end, we were not able to close the games.”

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There may be an element of Guardiola sparing his players a public dressing down following their latest setback. Although he did not expand on the details, defender Manuel Akanji confirmed his manager “wasn’t happy” after the recent 1-0 loss at Aston Villa.

However, there is enough evidence to back up the claim that there isn’t too much wrong with City’s overall play. They absolutely should have won each of the Liverpool, Spurs and Palace games.

Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Roy Hodgson’s side, who have won once in the Premier League since September, felt like by far the most damaging misstep. City were cruising at 2-0 up thanks to goals from Jack Grealish and Rico