Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini fears Yaya Toure could be ruled out for the rest of the season after coming off injured in the 3-2 defeat to Liverpool on Sunday.
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Toure was substituted after 19 minutes after appearing to suffer a problem when hitting a shot high and wide.
After the match, Pellegrini said: “It's difficult for Yaya to be in the next game. We will see tomorrow -- I don't know how serious he is injured. I think it will be difficult for him to finish playing this season.”
It comes as a major blow to City, who now find themselves seven points behind Liverpool, albeit with two games in hand.
However, City defender Martin Demichelis does not believe their title hopes are over and is banking on Brendan Rodgers’ side slipping up in the run-in.
The 33-year-old told the Manchester Evening News: “We’re obviously not happy about the result but we know we have matches ahead and you have seen in football that we can still win. They can still make mistakes.
“Hopefully we will win the rest and expect some mistakes from Liverpool. No one left the stadium feeling they were champions, and we have plenty of matches.”
Philippe Coutinho scored Liverpool’s winner after City captain Vincent Kompany sliced a clearance to the Brazilian.
“They scored from our mistake,” said Demichelis, who felt City’s comeback after going 2-0 down deserved a point.
“Given that we were better than them for more than 45 minutes, maybe 2-2 would have been a fair result. We finished the first half playing well, but after it we needed to find the balance between defence and attack.
“When we were attacking, we knew how good they are at counter-attacking, and that is where we had a lot of problems. But their only clear chance came from our mistake, so I can only complain about how unlucky we were. We should have got the draw at least.”
