Manuel Pellegrini remains convinced Chelsea will drop points between now and the end of the season
Manchester City kept up their pursuit of the Premier League leaders on Saturday with a 3-0 win over West Brom.
Jose Mourninho's side failed to take advantage of City’s loss to Burnley last week - and Pellegrini believes his champions can still catch their title rivals.
“I don’t think they are a winning machine all the time,” he said. “I think you ask me maybe two or three weeks before I am sure from now until the end of the season every team will drop points so it’s important to return to our normal performance and win our games.
“After that we will see what happens with Chelsea. Maybe we can win all the games and maybe we can retain the title. The important thing is they must feel pressure. If you don’t win it’s easy for them. We depend just on these eight games at least to finish in the same position we are now.
“It’s not just to finish in a proud way. Football has a lot of difficult moments. You never know what will happen when you have to play 24 points more.
“Last season in this game we were nine points behind Chelsea with three games in hand but we were also eight behind Arsenal. Especially in this league that is so easy for every team to beat another team.”
The international break will give Yaya Toure time to recover his fitness, but Samir Nasri faces a fight for his place in the first team after not featuring at all against West Brom.
The Frenchman has been left out of the matchday squad for successive home games, and has not played 90 minutes for the Blues since the win at Stoke on February 11.
It is not an encouraging sign for a player that last July signed on until 2019 at the Etihad, and Pellegrini confirmed there were no injury concerns for the 27-year-old, he had simply not been selected.
“He played against Barcelona for the first 45 minutes,” he said. “In this moment we have the whole squad fit. Every game I have to leave two players out.
"In this case it was Kolarov and Nasri and Yaya that was injured. When you have your whole squad two or three should stay out and in this case it was Nasri.
“Of course (he was happy to accept it). The most important thing is when you have the chance to take it and after that we can start next week with the whole squad absolutely convinced that every player is important if we want to win something.
Asked about his form, the manager added: “I always talk about the performance of the players with them. I think it’s your duty to analyse their performance.
“I say the same thing (about his attitude). All the things I have to say to the players I say to the players.”
David Silva bossed the game for City, creating plenty of chances and making the game safe for the Blues when he directed Stevan Jovetic’s shot into the net.
Pellegrini admitted it makes it easy for him when his midfielder is on song, but added in a mention for striker Sergio Aguero.
“I think that David is a top player. I was very happy with way he played today because he was in the whole game, every time near the ball. I was also very happy with way Sergio played.
“I think he played a great game. He received a lot of balls, had a lot of chances. When you have David and Kun at that level its very easy to play."
0 comments:
Post a Comment