Pep Guardiola has said that his Manchester City side "cannot talk about the title race" following their disappointing 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Saturday.
The Citizens were hoping to win successive games in the space of just four days after beating Nottingham Forest 3-0 at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday - a result that ended a miserable seven-game winless run in all competitions.
However, Man City were forced to share the spoils with Crystal Palace after fighting back from a goal down on two occasions to salvage a point in South London.
Daniel Munoz's fourth-minute opener for the hosts was cancelled out on the half-hour mark by Erling Haaland, who leaped well to meet Matheus Nunes' cross and head home his 13th Premier League goal of the season.
The Citizens made a sloppy start to the second half and fell behind again when Maxence Lacroix headed in Will Hughes's corner, but Rico Lewis restored parity in the 68th minute with a sweet strike fired into the top corner from the edge of the box.
Man City ended the contest with 10 men as Lewis was dismissed for a second bookable offence with six minutes remaining, and neither side were able to net a late match-winner.
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Guardiola: "We cannot talk about the title race"
A draw for Guardiola's side has extended their winless away run in the Premier League to four matches and comes as another huge setback to their hopes of retaining the title.
Indeed, Man City remain fourth in the table - at the time of writing - and sit eight points behind leaders Liverpool, who now have a game in hand after the Merseyside derby with Everton was postponed.
Guardiola was pleased with the spirited performance of his players at Selhurst Park, but he is now keen to distance his team from Premier League title talk.
"We take a point. We fought incredible and came back twice," Guardiola told BBC Sport after the match.
"It's a season to suffer. We'll see what happens in the last month. We tried. Big compliment for the opponent.
"We cannot talk about the title race when we lose four games in a row and draw. We'll try to recover players. We'll see in the last month.
"We have to do more games to be consistent. It's difficult in the situation we have. I'm really pleased for the players - they fought and did everything."
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Bernardo Silva: "It's not the way we built this team"
Meanwhile, Bernardo Silva expressed his disappointment after the match, but he believes that Man City can drag themselves back into the title race if some of their first-team stars quickly recover form injury.
"With Man City it's always two points lost," the playmaker told BBC Sport. "One point is better than zero but we're not happy at the moment. We know our situation with injuries. Coming to Crystal Palace is never easy but we have to do better.
"When I finish a game and I get a point I'm not happy. It's not the way we built this team, it's not our standard.
"We know how tough it is to come here when we have all our squad and we're in top form. We have to do better, we have to react better to the second balls. We have to give them less opportunities on set-pieces. We created a few chances and that wasn't our problem because we scored two.
"We're in December. We'd like to be in a different position. If we recover our players quickly we can always do it. But right now our concern is a different one. If we're fourth or fifth we have to look at winning the next game.
"The last month and a half have not been good enough."
Man City will endeavour to return to winning ways when they travel to Turin to face Juventus in the Champions League next Wednesday, before preparing for the latest instalment of the Manchester derby against Ruben Amorim's Manchester United at the Etihad Stadium on December 15 - a game that Lewis will now miss through suspension.
Oliver Thomas
