Gundogan Unsurprised By Liverpool’s Relentless Pursuit Of Man City

Liverpool closed the gap on the champions to six points with a game in hand on Saturday after beating Norwich City 3-1 at Anfield while City lost 3-2 at home to Tottenham Hotspurs.

The current top two are due to meet in early April at the Etihad Stadium, having drawn 2-2 at Anfield earlier in the season.

Speaking to BBC Sport, he said: "It's not a situation that we're not used to.

"We know from recent years that Liverpool are always contenders. They're always up there.

"We know they'll try everything to make our lives as difficult as possible. The good thing is that they still need to come here to the Etihad, but there are still many games to go."

City pegged back Tottenham twice in their game with Gundogan cancelling out Dejan Kulusevski’s opener before Riyad Mahrez levelled again in stoppage time after Harry Kane had given Spurs the lead.

Kane had the last laugh though, showing Pep Guardiola what he missed out on after a botched transfer pursuit last summer, with a late header from a Kulusevski cross.

"We kind of thought we'd rescued it," Gundogan conceded after the game.

"If you look at the whole game, we deserved to win. But football is sometimes crazy and we made easy mistakes. We gave them the ball to have possibilities to counter and that made us lose the game.

"They were also ruthless in their finishing up front. We had a lot of chances and the possibility to score a few more goals, but we gave them the chances they had too easily.

"It didn't feel like a bad game from us. They defended so, so deep, particularly towards the end of the first half. It's not so easy.

"Sometimes you have these kind of games and you need to learn from it. It's a wake-up call for us. There's still a long way to go."