Pep Guardiola Acknowledges Title Race Slip After Everton Draw

Manchester City walked into Liverpool on Monday night with the title picture clear in front of them. Win here, beat Brentford, and Arsenal would be dragged back within reach.

They walked out of Hill Dickinson Stadium with something far more uncomfortable: doubt.

A chaotic, breathless 3-3 draw at Everton has left Guardiola conceding what he almost never does in public – control.

“It’s now not in our hands; before it was, now no,” he said afterwards, his words cutting through the post-match noise as sharply as any late winner.

City are five points behind Arsenal now. There is still a game in hand, still four matches to play, still time for the league leaders to stumble. But the margin for error that once belonged to the champions has evaporated in a blur of missed chances and defensive frailty on Merseyside.

A Point Rescued, Two Lost

Guardiola did not dress it up. This was not a plucky point. It was a rescue act.

“It’s better than losing,” he said, half-consolation, half-critique. “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 did not go quietly.

Jeremy Doku, electric all evening, dragged them back from the brink with a dramatic equaliser in the 97th minute, completing his brace and briefly turning despair into defiance. Erling Haaland had already struck in the 83rd minute, thundering in what looked, for a few fleeting minutes, like the goal that would tilt the title race back towards Manchester.

But the damage had been done long before the Norwegian’s late intervention. Everton had sensed vulnerability and gone after it. City, usually so composed, were dragged into a wild contest they never quite tamed.

When the whistle finally went, it felt less like the end of a match and more like the end of an illusion: that City, as so often in recent years, could simply click through the gears in spring and suffocate the league.

Doku and Haaland Refuse to Let Go

If Guardiola’s admission sounded like a manager reading the table with brutal clarity, his players were not ready to surrender the narrative.

“It’s painful now, but there’s still a lot of games to go, and anything can happen,” Doku said. “We’ll keep on fighting. We owe it to ourselves and our fans.”

Haaland, trudging off the pitch, could be heard telling teammates, “We’re still in it,” a simple line that summed up the mood in the squad – bruised, but not beaten.

That belief will be tested immediately. City had arrived at Everton knowing that wins there and against Brentford five days later would pull them level on points with Arsenal. Instead, they need help. Help from opponents who have rarely laid a glove on Mikel Arteta’s side this season. Help from a schedule that, on paper at least, favours the London club.

Run-In Tilts Arsenal’s Way

City’s remaining league fixtures are hardly straightforward. Brentford come next on Saturday, awkward and unrelenting. Then it’s Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, and Aston Villa – four matches against teams with enough athleticism and ambition to punish any lapse in focus.

Arsenal, by contrast, stare at a run-in that looks forgiving. West Ham United, fighting to avoid the drop. Burnley, already relegated. Crystal Palace again, this time with far less on the line. On current form, it is Arsenal’s title to lose.

That is the shift Guardiola acknowledged. The champions can still win every remaining game and finish with a formidable total, yet they now require a stumble from elsewhere. The destiny of this Premier League season has moved across the map, from Manchester to north London.

Treble Dream Still Alive

What has not moved is City’s capacity to collect trophies. The league may be slipping away, but the domestic treble remains a live – if increasingly demanding – pursuit.

They have already beaten Arsenal to the League Cup, a statement win in March that underlined their enduring appetite for silverware. Next comes Chelsea in the FA Cup final on May 16, another heavyweight occasion on a calendar that never seems to ease.

So the picture is complicated. City are chasing history on one front while watching it drift away on another. The standards they have set make anything less than perfection feel like failure, and nights like this – wild, flawed, unforgettable – take on a sharper edge.

The champions are not finished. Not yet. But for the first time in a long time, they are running, not steering, in a title race they once controlled.