Pellegrini Says Manchester City Can Retain Premier League Title After Win Over United

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini is confident his side can overcome the struggling start to the campaign and "retain the Premier League title" after securing a crucial 1-0 victory over United on Sunday, 2 November.

The Premier League holders secured a deserved win over the 10-man United thanks to Sergio Aguero's only goal to leave City six points behind leaders Chelsea – after the Blues win QPR on Saturday.

"We have 28 games more to play, which is a lot of points. Nobody can know what will happen," the manager said.

"I said last week we were in a similar position to last year. Nobody knows how it will finish but we will continue to try and retain our title."

Pellegrini was happy with the victory but especially with the team's improvements.

The Chilean boss believes City deserved a bigger victory following Chris Smalling's red card, as he demanded three penalties.

"We had a lot of chances to score, clear penalties which the referee didn't give but instead of being concerned about that we continued playing, had clear chances and maybe after we scored the goal we dropped back a little bit," the boss said.

"It's not the way we normally do things, that's why they had one or two chances but we also deserved to score before and after that."

After the Aguero's goal, it looked City started to think in their Champions League clash against CSK rather than the United game itself.

"I'm very happy with three points. We must win and we played very well up until the moment we scored the goal. After that we maybe we finished playing thinking that the game was over, but it wasn't over," Pellegrini admitted.