Guardiola not planning January signings as City bid to keep pace with Liverpool

Champions Manchester City will aim to cut Liverpool’s lead back to four points as they resume their title chase by hosting Wolves on Monday.

Pep Guardiola’s men pulled themselves firmly back into the race for top spot in the Premier League with thrilling victory over the Reds earlier this month.

Since then they have dished out two morale-boosting domestic cup thrashings to lower division teams – beating Rotherham and Burton by a combined score of 16-0 – but Liverpool have been the first back into league action.

The Merseysiders pushed their advantage out to seven points with a 1-0 victory at Brighton on Saturday and the onus is now on City to maintain their pursuit.

Guardiola has been asked numerous times if City might try to add to the squad during this month’s transfer window but he remains adamant that will not happen.

He said: “Sometimes we have done it but normally when we want to buy a player it’s for the next four, five six years and normally these kind of situations don’t happen in this transfer window.

“For loan players maybe it can happen, for a short time, but I don’t think the big clubs buy players for just six months and important players are not sold in that period.

“If you have no injuries and you are satisfied, as in our case, with the squad we have, we decided going well, going bad, (we stick) with the same players we started the season.”

Striker Sergio Aguero could return for Wolves’ visit to the Etihad Stadium after a bout of illness while captain Vincent Kompany has also made good progress after suffering a muscular problem in the Liverpool game.