Bernardo Silva gives brutal 'war' message to under-performing Man City stars

Bernardo Silva believes Manchester City's struggles this season have shown him "who you can go to war with" in Pep Guardiola's squad, suggesting others have not measured up to the standards required.

City's first campaign without a major domestic trophy since 2016/17 was confirmed on Saturday as Crystal Palace beat Guardiola's side 1-0 in the FA Cup final.

Silva produced a typically industrious display in central midfield at Wembley Stadium and won the first-half penalty that Dean Henderson saved from Omar Marmoush.

The Portugal international offered an unsparing assessment afterwards, with Guardiola's men needing four points from their final two games of the campaign against Bournemouth and Fulham to make sure of UEFA Champions League football next season. 

City head into the final week of the campaign level on points with seventh-placed Nottingham Forest.

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"It's a tough season for us. It's a really, really bad season for us," he said. "Something has to change next year.

"But we have two important games because qualifying for the Champions League or not can make a huge difference for the club financially and for us.

"We want to be in the best competition in Europe. So, we need to push for the last two games."

Pressed on precisely what has to change, six-time Premier League winner Silva sought to chart a diplomatic course.

"I have my opinion, I'm not going to give it to you. It's for the big bosses to decide," he said.

"But definitely something needs to change when you don't perform at this level. The season was not good for many reasons."

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City's links to midfield reinforcements in the form of Florian Wirtz, Tijjani Reijnders and Morgan Gibbs-White might even leave Guardiola stalwart Silva vulnerable in an anticipated reshuffle.

However, speaking in the bowels of Wembley after the club's latest setback, he sounded like a man ready for the fight — something he suggested is not uniformly the case across the Etihad Stadium dressing room.

"In the bad moments, you learn a lot of new things," he added. "Who you can go to war with, first of all. Because it's in the bad moments that you see who the real ones are.

"There are a lot of things that were good for us to not to take for granted, for our fans, for the club. And yeah, don't lower our standards because I know we've got people used to winning every year. People demand this team to win every year.

"If you go and look around teams in the Premier League, all of them have two, three players that are unbelievable players. Our standard and our level needs to be very, very high to be champions again. And that's the level that we want to reach again."