Pep Guardiola has admitted it will be tough to lift his Manchester City side after they handed a major advantage to Liverpool in the Premier League title race.
City missed the chance to narrow the gap on the Reds at the top of the table to six points as they were held to a 2-2 draw at Newcastle United.
Kevin de Bruyne’s goal in the 82nd minute looked to have earned the defending champions the victory after Jetro Willems had cancelled out Raheem Sterling’s opener.
But a saw the visitors drop more points, and potentially hand Liverpool a major advantage in the title race.
Jurgen Klopp’s side sat eight points ahead of their rivals ahead of kick-off against Brighton at Anfield , and could hold an 11-point advantage over City come full-time.
And the difficulty of the task at hand looked to hit Guardiola at St James’ Park, with his side next in action at Burnley on Tuesday.
“After scoring for 2-1 with four or five minutes left, we conceded a free-kick we could have avoided, and then the quality from Shelvey made the difference,” Guardiola told BT Sport.
“The tempo was good all the time. We needed to move left and right a little bit more, but in general we did it well.”
Asked whether he felt his side had enough chances to win against Newcastle, Guardiola responded: “I think so, definitely.
“But we didn’t score, and we conceded two times from shots on target, so we have to accept it and work on our strength.
But Guardiola was less convincing when asked whether Man City could close the gap on Liverpool.
He said: “Of course, immediately it is tough, but we have just one or two days to recover from a bad moment. You have to live these kind of moments, but tomorrow we will lift it.”
