Pep Guardiola’s side have been well beaten in the title race this season but the England defender believes his side are back in the saddle.
Manchester City have “hit the ground running”, according to Kyle Walker, who has backed the club to carry their momentum through the rest of the season after the frustration of their Premier League campaign.
Pep Guardiola’s side surrendered their two-year hold on the top-flight crown as Liverpool claimed the title.
Despite that however City have already claimed silverware once this year with success in the Carabao Cup and they could yet add to their haul, with FA Cup and Champions League encounters to come, and England defender Walker believes that his side are in the ascendancy.
“We’ve come back and hit the ground running,” he told Sky Sports News. “I think the momentum is on our side, we’ve got the rhythm, players are looking sharp, feeling great, and hopefully we can just continue this great form we’re on and take it into the competitions we want to win.
“We all believe in ourselves, we all believe in the manager, his philosophy, his way of playing. I feel on our day we can beat anyone in world football. It’s going to be a very exciting six weeks. In my first season I picked up three trophies here, and in my second season I picked up four. Obviously we’re just missing the Champions League, that’s the only one I haven’t got.
“Missing out on the Premier League was a big blow for us as a team, but you have to take your hats off to Liverpool, they played fantastically well throughout the season and deserved it, so fair play to them. But hopefully now we can go and do what they did last year by winning the Champions League, and put all our eggs into that basket now.”
Having only edged out Liverpool by a point last term in the Premier League, City’s capitulation in the title race this season has been particularly notable, but Walker says that the club will only return with their drive and ambition doubled.
“This year was always going to be tough, and I felt in some games we’ve just thrown points away,” he added. “No disrespect to the likes of Norwich, but we shouldn’t really be going down there and losing. We will come back stronger, we’re hungry to not just sit on what we’ve done, we want to build on that.
“You have to show your appreciation for what Liverpool have achieved this year, and the way they’ve done it; they’re not just three or six points clear, they’re a lot of points clear of us, and that just shows they are deserved winners.
“Since then, it’s about being professional; they’ve won the league, but let’s not make the gap silly. Let’s try and close the gap down.”
