Pellegrini will not make Guardiola excuse for stuttering City

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini conceded that Leicester City were worthy favourites to lift the Premier League title following his side’s humbling in their top-of-the-table clash on Saturday.

Brazilian legend Ronaldinho has backed Manchester City to make Neymar their first signing of the Pep Guardiola era, according to the Daily Mirror.

“It’s important for everyone to know that I knew what was happening and that no one was doing anything behind my back”, Pellegrini told reporters on Friday.

I don’t complain about one action of the game. “We will see before the weekend”. “I think that Leicester played better than our team”. They already have a postponed league game against Newcastle United to reschedule.

It’s a mark of just how absurd this Premier League season has been that the comparison doesn’t even feel that ridiculous.

An FA spokesperson said: “The FA has worked closely with our broadcast partners and various public bodies to explore all avenues when arranging the Emirates FA Cup fifth-round schedule, however, with multiple teams playing in Europe on consecutive weeks it was very hard to manage the ties in a way to suit everyone”.

Aftewards, in a bid to avoid discussing the woeful form of Yaya Toure, Pellegrini admitted that “the team defended badly and attacked badly” and never quite as badly as when Mahrez picked his way through on 48 minutes.

“You talk about competing on all four fronts – if they end up not winning a trophy, is Pep going to keep those players next year?” Leicester had taken their chance and now the game really was slipping away from Pellegrini’s team. “We did it all worse than Leicester”.

He has a deal that runs until 2018 and would cost around £35m but Barcelona have never been a club to stand in the way of players on the very rare occasions that they want to leave. “We couldn’t do it. We are six points behind Leicester and we have 39 points more to play for”.