Pep Guardiola has already told Man City how to react to Liverpool FC defeat at Manchester United

It doesn't happen often, yet there may have been a few Manchester City fans secretly cheering on rivals Manchester United on Monday night.

With an unusual backdrop to a United-Liverpool fixture, as both sides went into the game without a win and this was a clash between 15th and 19th, it was United who earned their first three points of the season and leave Jurgen Klopp's side already five points behind City.

In response, the bookmakers have lengthened Liverpool's title odds and significantly shortened City's, while Sky Sports pundit and Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher said they were 'a million miles' from City at the moment. Pep Guardiola knows not to get drawn in to any such thinking.

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City themselves dropped points at the weekend with an under-par performance, so know there is still plenty of room for improvement, while Guardiola will also know how difficult a trip to Old Trafford can be for any team at any time - mainly due to United's unpredictable nature in recent years.

A five point advantage over Liverpool may look significant at this point, yet both City and Liverpool have clawed back deficits of far more in much shorter periods of time. As Guardiola said before this weekend when the gap was four points: "Just the 111 points to play!"

Now that number is 108, yet the point remains clear, as Guardiola continued: "It's very early days. I'm sorry but after two fixtures we can not make any plans about the future. We play Newcastle. Respect to all the other teams we will try to improve our game and win the game.

"It's just two Premier League games. We have a long way to training, we start the next month we try to