Manchester City vs Liverpool: Guardiola sets points target of 96

Pep Guardiola has set a target of 96 points for his Manchester City side to reach this season, with the Catalan believing this is what it will take if they are to retain their Premier League title ahead of Liverpool.

City fell to a surprise 3-2 loss to Tottenham on Saturday, while Liverpool came back to win 3-1 at home to Norwich to close the gap at the top to six points. Jurgen Klopp's side still have a game in hand as well.

"The margin against Liverpool is nothing," Guardiola said.

"We have to win a lot - more than 90 points - 95, 96 to be champions.

"We can lose, but it's the way we lose [that's important]. You can lose in different ways. Many times, when we lose, we lose as a great team and we have to continue in this way."

Guardiola's lessons learns from the past

Despite City's lead at the top and their experience of winning titles in recent years, Guardiola is taking nothing for granted, which he claims he learned to do at Barcelona.

"I was born in Barcelona and their academy taught me everything," Guardiola added.

"The best way, even there, is to think everything can go wrong.

"The warnings to yourself have to be as an individual player or as a team that tomorrow you can go down and lose and lose and lose. That's the best way to approach games.

"We made an incredible run in the Premier League so far and Liverpool is still there round the corner. That shows how amazing and difficult our opponent is.

"We know, of course, we can lose and be bad and drop points - this is not the issue - it's how you behave in those moments when you lose games.

"We can lose, of course we can lose. Nobody always wins. The important is being there and knowing we have to win.

"We have to fight to win the Premier League and, if we want to win, we will have to win an incredible amount of points against an incredible opponent we've faced many times."