City have the opportunity to move top of the Premier League for the first since mid-February with a victory over Fulham on Sunday in the 14:00 (UK) kick-off.
While he believes it will be a psychologic boost to move to the summit, the City boss says the visit to Craven Cottage will be the first of seven tough Premier League matches until the end of the season with the Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid added to schedule.
“[It will be] psychology important but we just have to do our performance the best as possible and win game-by-game to be close to arriving in the last games to be champion,” he said.
“When people say it’s over, it’s not over. When it’s over it’ll be over but it’s not. Still we have seven games, Goodison Park how aggressive [Everton] were and in every single game we play there and the opponent play for special things.
“Now we have to go to Fulham and win at a special stadium against an organised team. If we do our job we’re the closest but nothing is taken for granted. We were happy of course with the Arsenal result but that’s all, the day after it’s preparing for Fulham.
“It’s not 20 games left but seven games are seven games, a lot of games considering we have the Champions League around the corner.”
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City closed the gap on the Gunners in midweek with a brilliant performance in the 4-1 victory at the Etihad to move within two points having played two games fewer.
Victory put the destiny in City’s hands and was a setback for Mikel Arteta’s side after they had drawn their three previous matches in the Premier League but Guardiola expects Arsenal to push all the way until the final game of the campaign.
“I know Mikel [Arteta] perfectly, the players know it, they won’t give up,” he added.
“The reality today, we are two points behind, two games in hand but we have to be respectful for the teams we play, we have to beat them.
“We have to play, the reality is we are behind, if it finishes today they’re champions. You can drop points in a week, we have to be aware of that and it’ll be easier for us.”
With the season entering its final weeks, Guardiola says that any drop-off now would give no time to catch-up.
After our 3-1 win at the Emirates earlier in the season, we drew our next game with Nottingham Forest and the boss says there is no time to catch-up if we were to fall behind.
“We had some margin, now we don’t, we have seven they have five,” Guardiola added. “It’s really close.
“Maybe it’s a bad example because always I demand the performance and Forest was the best, we conceded one shot on target and played really good after an incredibly demanding game in London.
“The team played so well but we dropped points and we have to avoid that.”
