Bernardo Silva admits Manchester City are out of the Premier League title race and that they have been “nowhere near” the standards of previous seasons.
The attacking midfielder spoke to Sky Sports to discuss the season so far and was not afraid to open up for his underperforming side.
“We are very motivated to start this year well, knowing that 2024 was very good for us, but ultimately very bad for us,” he said.
“We accept that and understand that. We just have to get much better at everything. There isn't just one thing we need to get better at and that's in the small details.
“We haven't even come close to meeting our standards compared to the last seven or eight years.”
Last Sunday's win over Leicester was City's second in their last fourteen games in all competitions. But Silva is a serial winner, having won seven of his last eight seasons with Monaco and then City.
So not only is this form of action personally alarming, it clearly hurts the 30-year-old.
“It's the first time in my career that I've experienced something like this,” he admitted. “In the last eight or nine years I have won seven or eight competitions. I have only lost once. Even when I didn't win, I have never lost so many matches, never in my career.”
“Even when I was playing in the youth academy, losing two games was too much for me. I don't know, in thirteen games we only won two… fourteen in fact.
“It's ridiculous. If you had said this to me at the beginning of the season, I would have laughed because I would never have believed it.”
City have had a brutal few years, regularly going deep in all competitions and timing their form perfectly to finish the season as the best team in the country.
However, Silva emphasizes that the physical and mental toll of their schedule should not be used as an excuse for their unexpected results.
“We played the same number of games or a similar number of games in other seasons,” he claimed. “Playing every three days for five, six, seven years will obviously come at a cost for some players.
“The number of things that have happened to us in terms of injuries, in terms of underperforming… it's not just one thing. It's not just the injuries. It's a lot of things together, but the things we can control, we can do better.
“At this point in the season we just weren't good enough.”
City have cleared big deficits in the Premier League before, but even Silva admits this season is different.
The club is fourteen points behind Liverpool and has played a match more, meaning they can no longer consider themselves a contender.
“Right now it's about accepting reality. I'm not looking at Liverpool, I'm sixth or seventh in the league,” he says.
“I can't look at Liverpool or Arsenal or whatever. I'm now looking at the next game to win three points, so if I'm seventh, I'm looking at sixth and what it takes to be fifth, to be fourth to become.” , third.
“Ten games from the end of the season you can start looking at the table and doing a bit of math to see where you can go.
“At the moment it is not impossible because there are no impossible things in football. But at the moment Man City are completely out of the title race.
“There's no doubt about it, it's too late for us. People will always say: 'You won't win the league until January, but you can lose it'. The reality is we lost it.”
The Portugal international is clearly disappointed, but is also optimistic about City's chances in the other competitions, especially the Champions League and the new Club World Cup in the summer.
But his first aim is to give the fans some cheer during City's next match at home to West Ham this weekend.
“It is very important to win again. We won the last game against Leicester, we should have won against Everton. We are slowly starting to come back a bit, even though we are not yet close to our level.” .
“We need three points, but we also need to give our fans a win. They have been with us in this difficult period and in the last games at home we have not given them anything. So that is what we want.”
Follow Man City vs West Ham live on Sky Sports' digital platforms via the live blog from Saturday 1.30pm; kick-off at 3 p.m. Watch free match highlights from 5.15pm.
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