Pep Guardiola believes Manchester City’s 3-0 win over defending Premier League champions Liverpool shows his side are ready to compete for the title again this season.

Arne Slot’s side were swept aside by City at the Etihad via goals from Erling Haaland, Nico Gonzalez and the outstanding Jeremy Doku, and although Liverpool had a strong case Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed header should have stood, there was no denying they were second best.

The win sees City move up to second, four points behind Arsenal after their 2-2 draw at Sunderland on Saturday, with a fifth league win in six suggesting they are back in the mix after finishing 13 points behind Liverpool last term.

“I said to the players, ‘Don’t do it because yesterday Arsenal didn’t win, do it because we believe in ourselves that we can play against the champions of England and show they we are ready to be there with him this season’,” Guardiola said.

“Today we proved it, we did it – especially in the first half.”

But while Guardiola can think of putting pressure on Mikel Arteta’s Gunners after the international break, Arne Slot admitted Liverpool cannot spend time thinking about the title race until they have fixed the issues which have seen them lose five of 11 in the league to fall eight points off the pace.

Slot is still trying to assimilate £200million worth of summer signings into his squad, with every metric so far suggesting they have regressed rather than progressed from the side that won the league by 10 points last term.

“(Five defeats) feels too many,” Slot said. “The last thing I should speak about is the title race. We should focus on getting results before we can even think about that. The reality is we are eighth now. One team is quite far ahead, City are four points behind Arsenal.

“I said last season many times, even when we were leading, the best time to judge the league is of course after 38 games and then next best is after 19 games because you have played all the opponents.

“Our first focus should be on getting results and the last thing we should focus on is the title race…We need to improve, that is obvious.”

After missing an early penalty, Haaland headed City into a 29th-minute lead.

Van Dijk appeared to level with Liverpool’s first notable attempt at goal but Andy Robertson was offside when he ducked out of his header’s path, and was judged to have impeded Gianluigi Donnarumma.

Slot said in his post-match Sky Sports interview it was “obvious and clear the wrong decision has been made” but was more restrained in the press conference room.

“I would like to emphasise that being 2-0 down at half-time was a fair reflection of how the game went,” he said.

“But I have been on the opposite side when we have been much better and 1-0 up and maybe not scoring the second one and then the opposition make it 1-1 and things change.

“1-1 would have been the biggest gift at half-time because the second half was a different game. But being 2-0 down and later 3-0 down doesn’t give a good reflection of how things would have gone if it had been 1-0.”