Friday 4 March 2016 15:19, UK
Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini can feel the title slipping from his team's grasp and admits they cannot afford any more slip-ups.
They currently sit 10 points behind leaders Leicester - albeit with a game in hand - and host bottom side Aston Villa on Saturday.
After the euphoria of last weekend's League Cup final win over Liverpool, City came back down to earth with a bump at Anfield in midweek, their third consecutive league defeat.
Pellegrini said: "Of course, we are very frustrated about the result and the game on Wednesday but that is in the past, unfortunately for us.
"Don't ask me to think in a negative way. I won't do it," he said about the prospect of missing out on the Champions League places. "We are not going to give up. We are playing a team in a bad position but the worst mistake would be thinking we have already won the game.
"I don't want to have an excuse but it seems we didn't recover from the 120 minutes we played on Sunday. We didn't have many changes to make and we didn't play well.
"With every point we lose, it makes it more difficult and now we must be focused as we don't have any margin of error. We have one game in hand but I think it's important not to think about that but to think about improving our performances in the Premier League.
"Last week we played very well in the Champions League and the Capital One Cup but we returned to the Premier League and didn't do well.
"Remember the first season I was here, we needed to win the three games in hand and we won the three games. Everyone said we were out of it but we won the games and won the title. This group of players will never give up while we have the option to do it."
Pellegrini confirmed that Yaya Toure will return after he missed the 3-0 defeat at Anfield with a foot injury but Fabian Delph, Kevin De Bruyne and Samir Nasri remain out.
