Pep Guardiola Acknowledges Title Race Slipping Away After Everton Draw
Manchester City walked into Liverpool on Monday night with the chance to drag themselves level with Arsenal. They walked out with a 3-3 draw, a damaged title defence, and a manager who knows the balance of power has shifted.
“It’s now not in our hands; before it was, now no,” Pep Guardiola said, the words landing with the same thud as Everton’s late tackles.
City had mapped this week out as a springboard. Beat Everton, beat Brentford five days later, and the pressure would swing fully onto Arsenal. Instead, a chaotic evening at Hill Dickinson Stadium has left the champions five points behind, clutching a game in hand and waiting for someone else to blink.
They are no longer driving this race. They are chasing it.
A Point Rescued, Two Lost
Guardiola didn’t try to dress it up. This was not a plucky point on the road. This was survival.
“It’s better than losing,” he admitted. “We’d rather win. We play for that, and we just showed what a team we are. We tried everything. The players were aggressive.”
He was right on that last part. City hurled themselves at the game. They attacked, they overcommitted, they left space, and they were punished. The match swung back and forth, a title challenger dragged into a street fight by a side with nothing to lose.
The pressure finally told deep into stoppage time. Jeremy Doku, a winger built for nights like this, stepped up in the 97th minute to lash in the equaliser and complete his brace. The away end erupted, but the roar carried a hint of frustration. Relief, not triumph.
Doku felt it too.
“It’s painful now, but there’s still a lot of games to go, and anything can happen,” he said. “We’ll keep on fighting. We owe it to ourselves and our fans.”
Pain and defiance in the same breath. It summed up City’s evening.
Haaland’s Message in the Chaos
Erling Haaland, who had dragged City back into it with an 83rd-minute goal, walked off the pitch repeating a simple line to his teammates: “We’re still in it.”
It wasn’t bravado. It was a reminder. City have been here before, staring at a table that says “advantage Arsenal” and choosing not to believe it.
Yet this time feels different. The maths is brutal. Four games left. Five points behind. Arsenal ahead, and with what looks, on paper at least, a kinder run-in.
City’s remaining league fixtures are unforgiving in their own way: Brentford on Saturday, then Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, and Aston Villa. None of them straightforward. All of them now must-win.
Arsenal, by contrast, face West Ham United, Burnley, and Crystal Palace. Relegation-threatened, already relegated, mid-table. The kind of schedule that tempts you into thinking the job is done.
Guardiola knows better than to say that out loud. But he knows the margin for error has vanished.
Treble Dream Still Alive
For all the damage done to their league ambitions, City are not empty-handed. They already have the League Cup in the bag after beating Arsenal in March. They will walk out at Wembley on May 16 to face Chelsea in the FA Cup final with a domestic treble still, technically, within reach.
That is the thin line they now tread. A season that could still be historic, or one that might be remembered for the night the title slipped away in a 3-3 draw on Merseyside.
Guardiola framed it simply: four games left, “quite similar,” and then see what happens. The control has gone. The standard remains.
City will keep swinging. The question is whether Arsenal will ever give them something to hit.
