Hart slams City after disappointing Premier League campaign

Joe Hart believes Manchester City’s players have let themselves down in the Premier League this season.

City said farewell to manager Manuel Pellegrini with Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Swansea City to gain the point they required to secure a Champions League place for next season, when they will be led by Pep Guardiola.

Kelechi Iheanacho gave the visitors an early lead at the Liberty Stadium, but Andre Ayew’s deflected free-kick beat Hart on the stroke of half-time and the match proved to be the type of frustrating experience that has become all too familiar for England’s number one this term.

“It’s hard to be too positive after that, but we’ve got the job done,” Hart told Sky Sports.

“If you class finishing fourth as getting the job done then we have, but we know we’ve let ourselves down this season in the league.

“But we go again. We know the beauty of football is that you get another chance next year.”

Manchester City end the campaign 15 points behind champions Leicester City, who claimed a 3-1 win at the Etihad Stadium in February.

That result set in motion a stumbling end to City’s title tilt in the weeks following the announcement that Guardiola would succeed Pellegrini when he left Bayern Munich.

“We were in a really good position with only a couple of months to go and we’ve not finished well in the league,” Hart said.

“The positives to come out of it are we’ve won [the League Cup] and got to the semi-finals of the Champions League, which is progress.

“We’ve got to take all the positives and go into next season now.”

Hart and his team-mates expected to be locked in a final-day battle with Manchester United for fourth place, but their rivals’ scheduled match against AFC Bournemouth was abandoned after a suspicious package was found at Old Trafford

Asked whether that unusual and worrying state of affairs had an impact on his own team’s performance, Hart added: “”No, not at all. We knew what we had to do. We needed at least a point and we got it.”