Pep Guardiola looking forward after Liverpool defeat
Pep Guardiola is keen to get the second half of the season under way after a dispiriting end to 2016 for Manchester City.
City's title challenge suffered another knock as they were beaten 1-0 at second-placed Liverpool on New Year's Eve to fall 10 points behind leaders Chelsea.
Guardiola's side can ill afford to drop more points when Burnley visit the Etihad Stadium on Monday with Chelsea, after 13 successive wins, showing little sign of making mistakes themselves.
But manager Guardiola, a winner of multiple titles with Barcelona and Bayern Munich, is not giving up the chase.
He said: "When you win 12 or 13 games in a row, to drop points is not easy. The gap is huge because they deserve to be there. When they don't lose it is like this.
"But we are in the Champions League and league (contention). After that defeat on the last day of the year the conclusion is, always, 'could be better' but the way they are training, I am glad to work with these guys.
"Tomorrow we try it again, we start the second leg. We have due respect for the other clubs but we have to focus on ourselves and think about the next one and try to do what we need to do to win the games."
Defeat at Anfield ended the run of three successive victories that had got City back on track after back-to-back losses to Chelsea and Leicester.
It was a lacklustre showing, with City failing to create many chances after falling behind to Georginio Wijnaldum's eighth-minute header.
But Guardiola, who has not fresh injury problems ahead of Burnley's visit, was not overly disappointed with the performance against Jurgen Klopp's men.
He said: "I am not a guy to personalise and and say we lost for that reason. It happened for many things.
"But how we reacted at 1-0 at Anfield - I didn't see people who didn't run or play with personality. We just missed a little bit up front and Liverpool are one of the best teams.
"A few times it hasn't happened but normally when we play in these stadiums or opponents come to the Etihad Stadium we play with good personality."
A trip to the Etihad Stadium will hold little fear for most of Sean Dyche's Burnley squad, given they emerged from there two years ago with a point having battled back from 2-0 down at the interval against a team on a nine-game winning run.
The Clarets have only taken one point from eight games on their travels this year, though Dyche does not expect his team to be daunted by the prospect of taking on Guardiola's side away from home.
"There's a massive gulf between us and them, but it is the marvel of football," he said.
"We're here to take on these challenges and mostly we do take them on. If that gets us something, fantastic, if it doesn't, I don't think anyone will bat an eyelid. It's one for us to go there with freedom to take it on, and a big challenge.
"There was a good mentality to our performance second half two years ago, first half they were super strong and we gave a very strong second-half performance and upset a few coupons."
Source: PAR
