Manchester City stars Kyle Walker, Rodri and Angelino have insisted the Blues will not give up in the Premier League title race despite defeat to Manchester United seeing them slip 14 points behind league leaders Liverpool.
Jurgen Klopp's side defeated Bournemouth in the earlier kick off which put even more pressure on Pep Guardiola 's men to get a positive result against their fierce rivals.
However, goals from Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial condemned them to defeat at the Etihad Stadium, with City unable to mount a comeback after Nicolas Otamendi scored five minutes from full-time.
The Blues have now dropped as many points this season as they did in the entirety of the last campaign but the players are adamant a third consecutive title is still not out of their grasp.
"We played the way we wanted, but it's always difficult when you concede two goals," Rodri said after the game.
"You need to find spaces and at the same time you concede more spaces to them for their counter-atacks. It's very difficult to attack when they put eleven players behind the ball. We shouldn't have conceded those two goals."
"It's a big gap [with Liverpool], but my mentality has always been never give up. Never.
"We will play and we will fight untl the end. Of course, we know it's going to be very difficult now, but we have other competitions to play this season too, so we need to keep going."
Walker echoed the thoughts of his teammate, acknowledging the gap to Liverpool is big, but insisting City will not give up in their pursuit of more Premier League glory.
The defender highlighted the pace of Manchester United's attackers as a key reason for the defeat.
He said: "We knew they have quick players in quick areas.
"Martial, Rashford and James, they are very good in the counter-atack. We knew that and we didn't handle it as well as we could have.
"It's a massive gap, we know that. We need to keep fighting until the end. It's not over until it's over, we will keep trying, as a team."
Angelino - who was started ahead of Benjamin Mendy against the Reds - believes City should be proud of their showing despite not coming out on top because of the fight they showed to level the score line.
Like Rodri and Walker, he urged the squad to stay positive and remain focused on cutting the deficit heading into their remaining games.
"It's obviously not what we expected, but we are proud of the team, because we fought until the end," the Spaniard said.
"We created more chances than them, but we didn't score the goals. We tried and we kept trying untl the last minute. We need to keep this mentality for the next games.
"Our focus is to win every game. We don't think about the table. We need to focus on the positive and keep fighting.
"We are focused in keep improving, keep winning games. That's our mentality.
"We need to remain focused and try to do our best in every game".
