Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola say they must be in contention for silverware going into the final months of the season.

The defending Premier League champions, having achieved the two highest points totals in the history of the competition, find themselves eight points behind league leaders Liverpool after eight games.

“Of course it's difficult [to maintain form]," said Guardiola. "For 11 years, no team in England won back-to-back [titles]. It is difficult, of course it is.

"But you have a rival that is unstoppable right now. Eight games, eights wins. We lost games but in Spain the big clubs lost games, in Italy the big clubs lost games, here we are facing one team who are champions of Europe and didn't lose one game. It's difficult. In some games we could win but we didn't win. Our mistakes punished us a lot. During the season there are ups and downs. We try to get better and improve.

"From Saturday and in the Champions League, we try to make an incredible step forward, to win the game against Atalanta, then in February [Aymeric] Laporte will be back, most of the players will be back.

"We will see what happens in the last stages. Normally, when you win what we have won the last two seasons and you arrive in March and April being there, after that it's more difficult to drop points. But in the earliest stages of the season, sometimes it's normal. We tried to avoid it, we spoke about that but we cannot do that so far. We have to move on."