Tonight, we are expecting our most difficult match of this season so far.

Manchester City won their past 16 games and are playing really fantastic and efficient football.

The mindset when you have this kind of run is incredible, feeling you can win every time.

I had this with Real Madrid, in the first season we had 31 games without any defeats. But I also discovered that you have to lose in the end.

We want to be the team that beats City but for this there needs to be an improvement in every aspect from how we played against Fulham on Sunday.

I can say, for sure, we suffered from the effort against Tottenham Hotspur.

It has suited us to play regularly but, with an extra 30 minutes last Wednesday, we lost some power for the next match.

This is not the only reason for the result and, in my opinion, Fulham played very well.

We expected a complicated night and our only focus in the days before was to prepare for a tough game.

Our problems happen when we think the quality in the side can be enough to win.

The performance overall wasn’t good enough and we were disappointed to miss the chance to move up the table, especially after taking four points from tough matches at Leeds United and Manchester United.

We didn’t put the same intensity on the pitch as Fulham. It was our intention to have control in midfield, with extra bodies in that area, but we didn’t manage this.

Our start was slow, with Fulham pressing and using their energy, and we didn’t recover to play the game we wanted.

It has happened too many times that we lost at home when we could have done better.

Without fans in the stadium the match is more level and to reach our targets it is necessary to improve what we are doing at Goodison Park.

We did really well here in the Cup tie with Tottenham but the consistency is not the same as in the away games where our form is strong.

Joshua King played for Everton at Goodison for the first time and I was pleased with how he did his job.

Already, he is settled at the Club and integrated into the squad, learning what we want and showing his intelligence on the field.

He brought speed and competitiveness and it has been a positive start for him. He can be a big asset for us.

I believe we can compete with any opponent – we showed this a lot of times – but that ability comes from having spirit and character and fight.

We played seven of the other teams in the top 10 and took points from six of them.

This can give us optimism for tonight’s match, while understanding we are facing one of the best sides in Europe.

We welcome Pep Guardiola and the staff and players of Manchester City.

Pep’s team are always one of the hardest opponents because of the pace and aggression of their play.

They are a side with top talents in every position but also really humble, every one working hard for his teammates and the attitude always right at the top.

I have enormous respect for Pep, his record shows he is among the best in the world but it is also how he produces teams with the style he believes in that is really impressive.

It presents a unique challenge for opponents and I am looking forward to it.

We will have only three days to recover before our second Merseyside derby of this season.

It will be the third derby behind closed doors but will still feel really strange.

Football is for the people and the feeling when the stadium is full, with everybody living the game, is something hard to explain.

The most important aspect of the match will be the points we want to help us keep our good position in the table.

But we know what the fixture means to the city and in all the games our motivation is to do well for Evertonians and to try to make you proud.

It hurts all of us when we don’t do this – and the few times this season our standards went below what we expected, the reaction was fantastic.

As the team develops and progresses, we hope it is not necessary to respond to bad results often.

The past three times we lost, we won the next game. This is a trait of all the top sides and shows the players have the character and hunger to succeed for Everton, I think.

We recognise the quality of City but the objective doesn’t change: we want to win and will give everything for this to happen.