Is Pep cracking up? Raging at the referee, ungracious in defeat, botched mind games and strange team selections... as Man City fall nine points behind Liverpool in the title race and the threads unravel, are they suffering from Guardiola fatigue?

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Pep Guardiola has lost 71 matches as a manager. 71 out of a grand total of 643 in charge of Barcelona B, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City over the past 12 years. That equates to a pretty minuscule 11.04 per cent.

So losses don't come along too often for one of the game's most relentlessly successful bosses. Perhaps this unfamiliarity with losing situations explains his weird responses to it.

His post-match comments following City's defeat by Liverpool on Sunday night were certainly a classic of the genre. Cryptic doesn't really cover it.

Pep Guardiola was left enraged as his Manchester City side lost 3-1 to Liverpool on Sunday

Guardiola was furious as two handball decisions went against his team in their Anfield defeat

He walked in and described City's display as 'one of my most proud performances in all my years in management' despite Liverpool being superior.

'Proud' was exactly the same term used after City lost agonisingly to Tottenham in the quarter-finals of last season's Champions League. It seems to be Pep's default fall-back in such a situation.

Even stranger was the answer when questioned about his exaggerated 'thank yous' and handshakes with the match officials at the final whistle after City were denied two handball decisions.

Regardless of the fact his ostentatious greeting of Michael Oliver and his assistants had already become meme gold on social media by that point, Guardiola went on the defensive.

'What decisions? Oh, Mike Riley and his people - you have to ask them. Ask Mike Riley and the big bosses about it,' he replied.

He aggressively waved his finger at Michael Oliver but later claimed he was thanking him

Guardiola said he was polite and not sarcastic when he spoke to the refereeing team 

'I said thank you very much. I said the same in the Tottenham game at home [when City also fell foul of VAR with a crucial disallowed goal]. Thank you so much.'

Still, nice to know that gratitude had been expressed to the match officials, but only after raging at fourth official Mike Dean, holding up two fingers to represent the two calls that went against them and similarly ranting against the officials at full-time having tried to wrench their arms off.

'I congratulated them, it was polite,' Guardiola claimed. It was anything but.

It was understandable that Pep was agitated having seen his side beaten and fall nine points adrift in the Premier League title race.

But his post-match comments were those of a man at best a bad and ungracious loser; at worst a man who is losing the plot.

Guardiola holds up two fingers on the touchline to indicate the two decisions against City

The first of the handball calls that went against City, shortly before Liverpool's first goal

Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp, the one manager who has got the better of him on more occasions than vice versa, seem to really get under his skin.

Guardiola attempted some mind games in the lead-up to the fixture with his remarks about Sadio Mane's diving. When Klopp defended his forward, Guardiola beat a hasty retreat.

'When [Klopp] says he is not like this then it is not like this,' Guardiola said.

The backtracking was another sign of muddled thinking. If you're going to engage in psychological warfare ahead of the biggest game of the season, don't surrender when the other side returns fire.

To add further insult, it was Mane who scored Liverpool's third goal at Anfield and with a dive - the legitimate type - as well.

A safer form of mind games came when Guardiola said 'he does not know' if his City side can overcome the nine-point deficit. 'I am not a magician; I don't know the future,' he said.

The defeat, City's third of the season, leaves them nine points behind leaders Liverpool

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp is one of the few managers to often get the better of Guardiola

His best bet from here is to keep winning games and pile the pressure on Liverpool both psychologically and by winning points. Liverpool were, remember, seven points clear in January but finished second.

One mitigating circumstance for Guardiola is that City have suffered an injury nightmare in the early weeks of the season.

This has particularly affected his defence but, even so, Sunday's line-up at Anfield raised a few eyebrows with Angelino playing at left back in the absence of Oleksandr Zinchenko.

You'd have thought Benjamin Mendy would have been drafted in but the Frenchman didn't even make the squad.

Guardiola confirmed Mendy isn't injured and had trained the previous day and yet was completely overlooked for the biggest game of the season.

Angelino was preferred at left back in Guardiola's selection for the game at Anfield

Benjamin Mendy played for City in midweek but was dropped out the squad on Sunday

His overall team selection was described by Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville as lacking innovation and creativity. 'It didn't feel very Pep-like today,' he said.

It has been a case of square pegs in round holes at the back at times this season, with Guardiola having to make the best of it.

Nonetheless, they have already suffered defeats by Norwich, Wolves and now Liverpool in the league this season. Their next game against Chelsea has assumed enormous importance.

Guardiola is now in his fourth season as City manager and it's tempting to draw comparisons with his fourth - and final - season in charge of Barcelona.

Having scaled remarkable heights in the first three campaigns, a sense of ennui and mental fatigue crept in and Barcelona dropped too many points in the first part of the season before ultimately finishing nine points behind Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid.

Guardiola's fourth season with Barcelona in 2011-12 led to them finishing second in the league

Being such an intense manager, Guardiola demands the absolute maximum from his players at all time. You either sign up to this approach or you hit the road.

It works for the first two or three years but then the players, being only human, reach the limit of what they can give.

Guardiola, too, becomes fatigued and his ideas are less fluent, his decisions not quite right and his reactions to setbacks unfocused and sometimes aggressive.

Perhaps we're starting to witness the threads of success begin to unravel at Guardiola's City.