<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
City boss Pellegrini said his players suffered a hangover from Sunday\u2019s epic 3-2 defeat at tittle rivals Liverpool\u00a0and were unable to lift themselves against bottom club Sunderland.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s 2-2 draw\u00a0has left them six points behind leaders Liverpool and four behind Chelsea, with a game in hand, but reliant on both slipping up to give them any chance of snatching the title.<\/p>\n
Connor Wickham struck twice for Sunderland late on to cancel out Fernandinho\u2019s early opener, before Samir Nasri equalised with two minutes left to give City hope of salvaging a win the Frenchman almost snatched at the finish.<\/p>\n
But Pellegrini conceded his players had nothing left in the tank after their Anfield showdown and admitted Liverpool and Chelsea are now the favourites to battle it out for the title.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t take out of our minds the game against Liverpool and that was the consequence of why the team didn\u2019t play well,\u201d said Pellegrini.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was sure that after three days it\u2019s very difficult for the players to take out of their mind the game against Liverpool. We needed more intensity but our mind maybe was not in the moment to do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the players were more mentally tired than physically tired. Mentally it was very difficult to play this game after Liverpool.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have five more games to play. We must try to win the games and see at the end of the season which team has more points.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe in this moment Liverpool and Chelsea have a better chance than our team, because we\u2019re in third position, but we\u2019ll continue fighting until the last game.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore this match I was very worried about it. I say to play against a relegated team at the end of the season is always very difficult, because they fight for every ball as though it was the last one.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy duty now is to talk with the players and try to win the last five games and at the end of the season we will see which team has most points.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemember two years ago this team was six points behind the leaders and they won the title at the end. So it\u2019s difficult, but this wasn\u2019t the last game we play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunderland are now six points from safety with five games left.<\/p>\n
Boss Gus Poyet praised the courage his players showed in taking on City.<\/p>\n
Next up for the Wearsider is another trip to a title contender – Chelsea – on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Poyet said: \u201cThis is going to give us a little bit of that word I hate \u2013 confidence – and we go into the game on Saturday with a different approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to believe it\u2019s possible. We didn\u2019t stop, we didn\u2019t give up, because the players know how important it is for the fans and the club to go to the end, no matter what the result is.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manuel Pellegrini admitted his Manchester City players were mentally shot to pieces as their title challenge came unstuck. City boss Pellegrini said his players suffered a hangover from Sunday\u2019s epic 3-2 defeat at tittle rivals Liverpool\u00a0and were unable to lift themselves against bottom club Sunderland. Wednesday’s 2-2 draw\u00a0has left them six points behind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3574,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions\/3574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}