City’s incredible 21 game winning run – and 28 match unbeaten sequence overall – was finally ended by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side at the Etihad.
United got off to the best possible start through Bruno Fernandes’s first minute penalty and though City created a host of excellent chances, a second half strike from Luke Shaw secured the win.
It was a frustrating afternoon but with 10 games of the season left in the league, City still have a commanding 11-point lead.
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And as he reflected on the result, the boss said there was so much to proud of for his players and pledged that the squad would first recover and then look to rebuild momentum when we tackle Southampton at home on Wednesday.
“We have done incredible, but today the news is we lost so congrats Man United for this victory, but we are trying to win the Premier League,” Guardiola asserted.
“We will try to win the Premier League and we need to win six or seven games and now when you arrive in the last 10 games, everything is going to be shorter.
“Our opponents would have to win all their games and then we would have to lose four or five.
“What we need to do is recover.
“I will not speak to the team tomorrow but on the day of the game I will tell the team how incredible they are because of the way we lost today and kept going to the end against an incredibly difficult team who have been one year unbeaten away from home.
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“Having the margin we have at the top; it is in our hands but what we need now is new fresh legs next Wednesday and try to win another game.”
Addressing the media at his post-match press conference Guardiola also insisted that the Southampton match would present a completely different type of challenge.
And he insisted that the level of performance was the key barometer for him in his deliberations regardless of records or winning sequences.
“I’m not going to analyse thinking we won 21 and that we were perfect -no,” Guardiola added.
“Like when we won all the games we won, thinking ‘that is perfect’- it is important to consider how we played whether we win or lose.
“I am pretty sure that after we won games lately, that this was going to happen.
“The way we will play Southampton will be completely different to how we played United and we are going to approach and decide how we are going to play and then try to do it.”
