Man City boss Pep Guardiola after West Ham thrashing: The title is still Chelsea's to lose

The thrashing of West Ham was achieved with Sergio Aguero dropped to the bench in favour of Gabriel Jesus and it closed the gap behind the leaders to 10 points with 15 games to go.

The Chelsea manager was at the London Stadium to run his eye over one of his main title rivals and, while Pep Guardiola tried to play down the psychological impact of tonight’s result, he did accept there are plenty of pit-falls for the leaders to fall into during the run-in.

“Antonio doesn’t have to be too worried about what he saw today,” said Guardiola. “He’s 10 points in front of us. Only Chelsea can lose the Premier League.

“I don’t think we can pressure them. It’s a mistake to think about Chelsea when you are 10 points behind. You have to think about winning games.

“Look at how many they’ve lost in the last 16. They’re not going to lose four or five in the games they have left. Although anything can happen in football.

“They have to travel to Old Trafford. We have to go there. We saw with Watford yesterday and Tottenham who could not win at Sunderland with their talented young players, what can happen.”

Guardiola is more excited about the longer-term future, pointing out his starting attack of Leroy Sane, 21, Raheem Sterling, 22, and Gabriel Jesus, just 19, is the youngest in Europe.

Slaven Bilic was unsurprisingly more downbeat, not least because the 5-0 thrashing by Manchester City in the FA Cup is still fresh in the memory.

“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “If you give the ball away in those areas, they’ll punish you.

“It’s a heavy defeat for us but we can’t let it hurt. We have to bounce back like we did after the FA Cup defeat.”