- Kevin Nolan has backed City’s title credentials
- The pundit praised Pep Guardiola’s winning environment
- City remain firmly in the race with Arsenal
Kevin Nolan has claimed Manchester City have the mentality and environment needed to chase down Arsenal in the Premier League title race.
With six games in just 20 days, Pep Guardiola’s side have a big challenge ahead of them if they want to win the treble this season.
City are three points behind Arsenal with a game in hand. They face Everton next on Monday, and winning by a big goal margin will be the objective to top the Premier League table again.
While their last three games have revealed the pressure they are under, the Citizens have shown they can still win by more than one goal at this stage of the competition.
Arsenal, on the other hand, have found consistency hard to come by at this stage, with two losses in their last five Premier League games.
Pundit Kevin Nolan also backs the Sky Blues, as the former footballer believes that City have all the ingredients to finish the season strongly.
Kevin Nolan makes Man City title claim
Speaking to Sky Sports, Kevin Nolan talked about the new generation of players at the Etihad. He claimed that they are stepping up for City despite the pressure.
The former West Ham midfielder pointed towards the culture that Guardiola has built around the club. He believes that Man City have a ‘winning environment’ which has helped them win multiple titles in recent seasons.
“We talked about this, about it being a new generation, a new crop of players. Can they now adopt what the Man City of old did, where they went on that incredible run and hunted Liverpool down? I think what we’ve seen is that they’ve got something,” Nolan said.
He added: “Everybody knows when you go in today, you go walking into a winning environment, and if you can’t handle that, you’ll soon be put on the sidelines with Pep.”
“And I think what we’ve seen is that there’s been a lot of them players who he’s bought over the last year, who’ve started stepping up in the last few weeks.”
City’s title experience could matter again
As Nolan mentioned, Guardiola’s side have been in this position before. However, despite the odds, they have repeatedly produced winning runs in previous title races.
Likewise, this experience will be key to producing similar results. The players who have lived this experience under the Catalan manager will prove to be of great importance in this run-in.
“You’ve got Bernardo Silva, who’s absolutely the massive force in dragging them, and when he talks about environment and them creating it, he’s created the environment, and you’ve got to be able to maintain them standards within the environment,” Nolan said about Silva.
He added: ” John Stones will be behind the scenes. I’ve just mentioned Bernardo Silva. Erling Haaland, and then you’ve got all these. Exactly, so these are mentality monsters in their own individual right,”
Pep Guardiola has little room for error
City’s challenge is far from simple, considering the May schedule and especially the injuries that Guardiola is facing at the moment.
The main defensive duo remains unavailable. Luckily, the Catalan manager still has Nathan Ake and John Stones as further backups behind March Guehi and Abdukodir Khusanov.
Rodri remains on the sidelines and is still a doubt for the Everton clash. With a tense schedule up ahead, Man City can’t afford to lose any more players while having no margin for error in the upcoming games.
