THE Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini has played down the significance of this weekend's top-of-the-table match against Leicester City.
Claudio Ranieri's side have defied sceptics throughout the season and travel to the Etihad Stadium on Saturday as the surprise leaders of the Barclays Premier League.
Leicester hold a three-point lead at the top and have shown no signs of slowing down with the outstanding Jamie Vardy firing them to a superb 2-0 victory over Liverpool in midweek.
Claudio Ranieri's outsiders are now starting to be regarded as genuine title contenders and their match against City has been eagerly anticipated, but Pellegrini points out it is not a decisive match.
Pellegrini said: "We can win this game or lose this game and it will not finish the Premier League here. After this you still have to play 13 more games, 39 points. There are still a lot of points.
"You cannot think because you win you are the champions. If you lose you still have a lot of things to fight for between now and the end of the season."
The seeds for Leicester's dramatic rise were sown in their late charge away from relegation last season.
Pellegrini has been impressed and believes they are capable of lasting the course.
The Chilean said: "I think Leicester started playing very well last season. They won seven of their last nine games. They started playing with high confidence, knowing what they can do.
"This season, maybe at the beginning it was a surprise but now it is not a surprise. They are playing with a very high performance, they have a team that works well together and they have an experienced manager. I think they will be involved in the title race until the end.
"I hope we can win to close the gap and continue fighting with Leicester and other teams to see who will win the title this year."
Claudio Ranieri echoed the sentiments of his counterpart at City and says he remains grounded as he contemplates matches such as today's and the one against Arsenal next weekend, matches that while not decisive will start to give observers some idea of where the title might be headed, not least with Spurs due to face City on the same weekend that Leicester travel to the Emirates. "Even if we win, and we try to win, then we can lose with Arsenal," Ranieri said. "It is difficult to say this [that Leicester can win the title]. We want our fans to dream but we know it's a tough match and from now there will only be tough matches.
"We must continue in this way. I tell my players we make 39 points in the first half [of the season] so I want 40 points from the second half – one more.
"We have to take two points every match between now and the end of the season to arrive at 79 points. I don't know if it is good enough to win [the league], but I want to improve.
"If we don't improve, we still make a fantastic season but we slow down.
"We believe in the next match. We believe we are working well. We believe sooner or later we lose but nothing must happen."
Ranieri has been asked on countless occasions over the past few months whether he believes Leicester can win the Premier League and he has played it down every time.
Asked if he had told his players that he believes they can lift the title, the affable Italian said: "You want to know if I told something to my players?! Ha ha ha. This is a secret.
"It's a battle now - Manchester City and then Arsenal. We have to make sure we just keep working and running and running.
"I hope we don't feel the pressure because it's the first time we have been here."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here