Man City midfielder gives up Premier League title| All Football

Bernardo Silva admits Manchester City are out of the Premier League title race and that they “have not been anywhere near” the standards of previous seasons.

The attacking midfielder sat with Air Sports to discuss the season so far and wasn’t afraid to open up about his underperforming side.

“We are fully motivated to start well this year knowing that 2024 is very good for us but in the end very bad for us,” he said.

“We accept that and understand that. We need to improve everything a lot. It’s not just one thing we need to improve on and it’s in the small details.

“We haven’t even been close to our standards compared to the last seven or eight years.”

Last Sunday’s win over Leicester was City’s second in their last 14 games in all competitions. But Silva is a serial winner, lifting league championships in seven of his last eight seasons at Monaco and then City.

So this run of form isn’t just scary personally – it’s clearly hurting the 30-year-old as well.

“This is the first time in my career that I have been through something like this,” he admitted. “In the last eight or nine years, I’ve won seven or eight leagues. I’ve only lost once. Even when I didn’t win, I never lost so many games, never in my career.

“Even when I was an academy player, losing two games was too much for me. I don’t know, in 13 we’ve only won two… 14 even.

“It’s ridiculous. If you told me this at the start of the season I would have laughed because I would never have believed it.”

City have had a steady few years, consistently going deep in every competition as well as timing their form perfectly to finish the season as the best team in the country.

Silva insists, however, that the physical and mental toll of their schedule should not be used as an excuse for their unexpected results.

“We played the same amount of games or a similar number of games in other seasons,” he claimed. “Of course, when you play every three days for five, six, seven years, for some players there will be a cost.

“How many things happened to us in terms of injuries, in terms of under-performing… it’s not just one thing. It’s not just the injuries. It’s a lot of things together but the things we can their management can do better.

“We weren’t good enough at this stage of the season.”

City have chased down big deficits in the Premier League before but even Silva admits this season is different.

The club are 14 points behind Liverpool and have played a game more, which means they can no longer consider themselves rivals.

“At the moment it’s about accepting the reality. I’m not looking at Liverpool, I’m sixth or seventh in the league,” he said.

“I can’t be looking at Liverpool or Arsenal or whatever. I’m looking right now at the next game to get three points so if I’m seventh, I’m looking at sixth and what it takes to to be fifth, to be fourth, third.

“Ten games from the end of the season you can start looking at the table and do some maths to see where you can go.

“At the moment it is not impossible as there are no impossible things in football. But at the moment Man City are completely out of the title race.

“There’s no question about that, it’s too late for us. People will always say, ‘You don’t win the league until January but you can lose it’. The truth is, we’ve lost it. “

The Portugal international is clearly disappointed but is also optimistic about City’s chances in other competitions, particularly the Champions League and the revamped Club World Cup in the summer.

But his first objective is to give fans something to cheer about in City’s next game against West Ham this weekend.

“It is very important to win again. We won the last game against Leicester, we should have won against Everton. Slowly we are starting, even if we are not close to our level, we’re starting to come back a bit.

“We need three points but we also need to give our fans a win. They have been with us in these difficult times and the last few games at home, we gave them nothing. So we want that. “

Follow Man City vs West Ham live on Sky Sports digital platforms via the live blog from 1.30pm on Saturday; kick-off at 3pm. Watch free match highlights from 5.15pm.