Manuel Pellegrini vows Manchester City will keep fighting in title race
Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini insists his side will not give up in the title race.
City have fallen 10 points behind Barclays Premier League leaders Leicester and slipped to fourth - albeit with a game in hand - after losing their last three games. Prior to that sequence they had been regarded as title favourites.
With City closing in on a place in the Champions League quarter-finals, there has been a suggestion the club could prioritise the European competition but Pellegrini is still determined to reclaim the domestic crown.
The Chilean said: "We are not going to give up. Ten points is a lot but we have one game (in hand) and in the Premier League you never know when you are going to lose points.
"I don't see why the players would be in a negative mind. I think they try to win every time they play.
"We have just had a bad moment in the league but we have another 33 points to try to reach it."
The maximum points City can now attain is 80 and Pellegrini thinks that could be more than enough to win the title in such an unpredictable season.
He said: "I said a couple of months ago, before we ended the first round of fixtures, that for me maybe winner will have less than 80 points. It is impossible to know but I am sure we will have a champion of around 75 points or more."
But that would still require City to embark on a seriously strong run of form at a time when concerns might be growing about the challenge from clubs beneath them.
Manchester United and West Ham have taken advantage of City's poor form in recent weeks and are now challenging for their top-four place.
Missing out on Champions League qualification is certainly not in City's script but it is something Pellegrini, who will hand over to Pep Guardiola in the summer, is not even considering.
He said: "Don't ask me about thinking in a negative way because I never do it. It's not in my mind, thinking about that at this moment.
"It's important to improve our performance to try to continue fighting first for the title of the Premier League."
Despite their recent bad run, City will be expected to get back to winning ways as they host struggling Aston Villa at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday.
But Pellegrini says there can be no room for any complacency in the quest for victory.
He said: "It must be (victory) because we play at home against a team that is not in a good position - the worst position in the Premier League - but I think the worst mistake we can make is to think we have already won the game.
"We must concentrate and try not to make mistakes. All the teams in the relegation positions are difficult because they try to win in any way. I hope we recover our performance and win three points."
Yaya Toure is set to return after he missed the midweek defeat at Liverpool with a foot injury.
Meanwhile, Aston Villa manager Remi Garde insists there is no rift within his squad as they fight for survival.
There have been suggestions of problems in the camp but Garde has strongly refuted the claims, insisting skipper Micah Richards came and spoke to him after Tuesday's 3-1 defeat to Everton and assured him the players do not have issues with each other.
"I'm surprised this kind of stuff goes out because I strongly believe it is not the case simply because I had the captain of the team, Micah, in my office after the last game," he said.
"We had a private chat. I don't want to say exactly what was talked about but to sum it up it was the exact opposite of what you're saying.
"It's strange that it came out now. Four or five weeks ago nobody was talking about that.
"All of a sudden, when you lose a game in football everything is strange. To be fair, I don't know exactly what has been coming out or what people are reading or listening.
"But some of the stuff that has been reported is completely wrong. Once again this is football, when you lose games you have to deal with problems that don't even exist."
Villa have lost five of their last six games - conceding 11 in their last three matches, including a 6-0 defeat to Liverpool - and Garde conceded spirits are low.
"Enjoying is not the word when you're bottom of the league," he said. "Nobody enjoys it when you're bottom of the league. I'm not enjoying it."
Carlos Sanchez (hamstring), Jack Grealish and Libor Kozak (both ankle), Adama Traore (foot) and Jordan Amavi (knee) are all out.
Source: PAR
