Bernardo Silva has admitted that Manchester City have not lived up to expectations in the Premier League this season.

The reigning champions currently trail league-leaders Liverpool by 22 points, although City are through to the League Cup final, the fifth round of the FA Cup and the last 16 of the Champions League.

But Silva concedes that Pep Guardiola’s side have been off the pace in the Premier League this term.

“The Premier League has been a huge disappointment to be so far from Liverpool and now we have to fight for the second position,” he told Sky Sports.

“It hurts a lot because when you start a season, you always want to go for the Premier League, it’s the main competition and the most important for the fans. So it’s very disappointing, no one expected us to be this far from Liverpool in January or February, so it’s something that we need to learn from. We need to understand what failed and how we can solve it.

“I don’t think it’s how you defend or attack, I think it’s a mix of plenty of things. I think little details make a huge difference and if you look at us this season, all the little details never went our way. It’s not an excuse, we should’ve done better, and we are very disappointed in ourselves.

“But if you look at the injuries we’ve had, the VAR decisions that never went our way and I’m not complaining, but in football, it sometimes goes your way and sometimes not. We create 30 chances per game and we score one or two goals. The opponents, they go close once or twice and they score one or two goals as well but the game is there.

“The way we play is the same way we’ve been playing over the last few seasons. If you look at the stats, we’re still the team that creates the most chances, scores the most goals but in the important moments, we’ve not been as lucky as in the past seasons.

“We always concede in the last minute, Liverpool always scores in the last minutes and these little details in football make the difference. The team just has to try and find the balance.”