City’s fight for this season’s crown finally ended with a 2-1 defeat to Chelsea, but the boss wants to shift focus onto the FA Cup and Champions League,
“Congratulations to Liverpool, their fans, the manager, the players. Well deserved. They are good champions,” said Pep.
“Now. we have five or six weeks to play. The FA Cup on Sunday is important and we need to achieve qualification for UCL and after that we need to prepare for Madrid.”
Asked if he was disappointed to be so far behind Liverpool, Pep said: “That is the reality. We are far behind, but the other 18 teams are further.
“This season we dropped points at the beginning, some unfairly and some because we made mistakes like today,” he conceded.
“Liverpool didn’t drop points. Next season we’ve got to be more consistent and recover the points we lost this season.
“Two seasons we were 25 points in front of Liverpool and the next season they recovered. Now we’ve got to recover like Liverpool.”
City were the better side for long periods against Chelsea but were undone by a defensive mix-up and hand-ball on the goal line that saw Fernandinho dismissed in a pulsating clash at Stamford Bridge.
But the boss was more than happy with the fight and attitude of his players, despite the loss.
“In general we were there. In terms of attacking we were good,” he said.
“It is not easy to attack Chelsea with the physicality in their team.
“Unfortunately, we made mistakes and at this level against this quality it is difficult.
“We played until the end with a huge personality. In general I am satisfied with the performance.
“We wanted to win the game. We did good things but we have to learn we have to be consistent.”
Pep also admitted he always believed winning the Premier League year after year was a huge challenge, saying: “I never thought that we always could win (the league).
“We can now say the last 10 competitions we played in, we won eight titles,” said the Catalan.
“That’s never happened before in this country. You cannot win all the time.
“We missed one central defender and Laporte was injured in the season.
“That was a problem for us and we didn’t show the consistency we needed to play better.
“I’ve never thought as a manager that you can always win.
“Liverpool, after winning the Champions League and not winning the Premier League for 30 years, played with incredible focus as if it was the last chance they had.
“We cannot forget that we won two titles this season and we have two more to play for.
“We are going to try. We are going to try and qualify for the Champions League next season and then we can play in it in August.
“We have to take a little bit of perspective, be humble and say we can’t win all the time.
“We have to learn to avoid this situation again.”
