Why Man City will still win the league

• With the Treble champions of last year behind 1-0 and the possibility of losing their fifth straight Premier League game, City’s faltering season was facing yet another severe blow at halftime of their match against Luton on Sunday.

• With a foot ailment that kept him out of Sunday’s match, Haaland is City’s most recent injury concern. Guardiola isn’t sure when he’ll be ready to go back.

Although Manchester City’s mini-crisis is over, they still had a scare.

At the interval of Sunday’s match against Luton, City’s faltering season was looking at yet another major blow as the defending champions were down 1-0 and perhaps going into their fifth straight Premier League match without a victory.

But Jack Grealish and Bernardo Silva scored two goals in three minutes of play in the second half to save Pep Guardiola’s team, and City’s comeback was the ideal answer to anyone who was skeptic about their ability to win the championship again.

“The team showed their character, but that didn’t surprise me at all,” said former City defender Micah Richards, who watched their 2-1 win at Kenilworth Road for MOTD2.

“Whenever people talk negatively about them, it just spurs them on. I wouldn’t say Pep has been touchy recently, but it is like he is taking that criticism and going ‘well, if that’s what you think, we will show you’, and the whole team has got that attitude too.“They might not win the title, although I believe they will, but they will fight to the end. If someone else does beat them to it, then it is going to be very close.”

Guardiola hit back at Gary Neville after last weekend’s draw with Spurs, when the Sky pundit claimed City had become “complacent” after winning three titles in a row. Richards understands why Pep was so unhappy at his side being given that label, and feels it was unfair.

“I don’t think ‘complacent’ was the right word Gary was looking for,” Richards said. “I wanted to be sure, so I looked it up in the dictionary to be certain about its exact definition.

“It means being so self-satisfied and uncritical of yourselves because of success that you don’t even try your hardest, and that’s not Pep, or the City side I see. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s what Gary meant. I think he just meant that, by their high standards, City are letting teams back into games, where normally they would be ruthless and finish them off.

“If you look at those games they drew, against Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham, they had opportunities to wrap all three of them up — if, say, Erling Haaland takes his chance when City are 2-1 up against Spurs, we would not be having this conversation.

“That is not down to a lack of hunger, though, or the team taking their foot off the gas. It never is.”

Instead, Richards feels City have missed some of their usual game-changers, with new arrivals like Mateo Kovacic and Matheus Nunes unable to make the same impact in close games.

“People need to remember that Kevin de Bruyne has been out since the start of the season, and City lost Ilkay Gundogan and Riyad Mahrez in the summer,” he added.

“The thing I loved about Mahrez was that even if he wasn’t playing well, he would always finish games off and get City over the line in vital moments.

“Gundogan and De Bruyne did that a lot too, as well as being such a key part of the way City play. Of course, they are missing all three of them in midfield.

“I thought Kovacic played well against Luton but it has been hard for him to come in and adjust to City’s system, and it’s the same for Nunes as well.

“They are used to playing a certain way but now they have got centre-halves coming into their midfield space, and full-backs too.

“Josko Gvardiol has also found it difficult because he is one of the best young centre-halves in the world, but Guardiola wants to use him at left-back. It is not as if he is asking him to tuck in, either, because he was flying forward all the time against Luton.

“That’s Pep for you — he puts City’s system before any player — but I know myself that asking a centre-half to go into full-back areas is not easy to pull off. The distances you keep to opposition players are very different from when you are in the middle, and it is easy to be exposed in one-on-one situations out wide.

“Gvardiol is an excellent defender but he does not want to be out there, stopping crosses and all of that. As he found against Luton, it only takes one small mistake to lead to a goal.”