Boss Pep Guardiola admitted the goalless draw at Southampton means Manchester City will have to fight until the end of the season for a Champions League place.
Even though a victory on the south coast would have moved City level with second-placed Arsenal, a top-five finish is by no means assured.
Guardiola’s side have an FA Cup final against Crystal Palace to focus on next weekend after which they will probably have to beat Bournemouth and Fulham to ensure they hold off the chasing pack of Newcastle, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest.
“With the result today, yeah,” he said. “We have three games, one FA Cup final and two (league) games.
“I didn’t expect differently from a month ago, that it’s a fight until the end.”
Southampton withstood wave after wave of attacks with Erling Haaland, back after missing the last seven matches, left frustrated, goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale denying Nathan Akanji, Savinho and Ruben Dias, and Omar Marmoush hitting the crossbar in stoppage time.
It was the first time City had failed to beat the team bottom of the table since November 2015 – a goalless draw with Aston Villa – and the first time they had had 26 shots without scoring since losing 1-0 to Southampton five years ago.
City defender Dias blasted Saints’ tactics, saying: “They don’t even try to play, just wasting time the whole game.
“I don’t even feel like they want to play the game or win the game. They are just sitting around. We tried every way.”
But Guardiola added: “Absolutely not. They can do whatever they want. For many years here we faced them in different approaches and they decided to play in that way.
“So it belonged to us, it’s our duty to break them. This is what you have to do. And we had the chances.”
Pressed on whether Haaland will be fit enough to start at Wembley next Saturday, Guardiola added: “We have a week to think about it. But it was really good for him to play 97 minutes today, we did not expect him to play that much.”
There was relief around St Mary’s at the final whistle as Southampton finally rid themselves of the spectre of being crowned the joint-worst team in Premier League history.
Rock-bottom and already relegated, they battled to secure their 12th point of a sorry season which eased them past Derby’s record low tally of 11 in 2007/08.
Southampton’s official X account even had a cheeky message for the Rams, saying: “Sorry if we got your hopes up.”
The record has been all anyone has talked about around the club since about November, so bad have Saints been this term.
“I didn’t know much about the points record,” joked interim boss Simon Rusk.
“I totally understand how important it was for the club to fight not to have that but for me it was about focusing on the performance.
“We’re feeling good. We knew the size of the task today and to me it was more about the principle of the job. We handled it really well.
“We had a game plan, we wanted to build on what we have done well, our priority was to become a harder team to beat and today we were a little more complete.
“It was a nice moment when the referee blew the final whistle.”
