It's just over five months since the season kicked off and after 34 games, City have finally suffered their first meaningful defeat. Their only other loss came away to Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League in a match played 2,000 miles from home, four days before the Manchester derby and one that had no bearing on their top-placed finish.

Until Sunday's defeat, City had not lost to an English opponent since the FA Cup semifinal with Arsenal on April 23, 2017 -- and that was only after extra time.

Their last defeat in the Premier League, on Apr. 5, was 30 games ago away to Chelsea, who would go on to be crowned champions. City have won 26 of those 30 matches since; indeed, that run of results amassed a total of 82 points, which would have been enough for City to have been crowned champions in seven of the past 24 Premier League seasons even with eight games to spare.

But while many have been carried away with the extraordinary set of results, Guardiola has remained grounded about his target of winning trophies. Throughout their remarkable run, he has maintained that the title race is not over despite almost everyone in football claiming the contrary, including rival managers Antonio Conte and Jurgen Klopp, who were willing to hand him the crown before the turn of the year.

With the Premier League title race "over," much of the talk then switched to whether Guardiola's City were a serious threat to Arsenal's "Invincibles."

"That is not going to happen," Guardiola insisted. "Arsenal's record belongs to [Arsene Wenger], we are not going to break it -- he has to be calm."

Arsenal's record remains unique for another year and that was always likely to be the case with Guardiola more interested in winning points than records. He masterminded dominant victories away to Chelsea and Manchester United with an attacking approach, and it was always likely that style would eventually see City come unstuck at one of their rivals. No side has won at Stamford Bridge, Old Trafford and Anfield in the same season for 31 years. But City still have the best record of any team after 23 games in Premier League history and have amassed a 15-point margin over second-placed Manchester United, ahead of their game against Stoke City at Old Trafford on Monday night.

It's all been done an unapologetically attacking way. After 23 games, the Invincibles had seven fewer points, 23 fewer goals and a goal difference of +29 compared to City's +50. Arsenal also failed to land any other trophy in 2003-04 other than the Premier League while City still are competing in all four competitions. A quadruple is still a possibility but Guardiola is again remaining rational about the chances of it happening.

"What we are living is unreal," he insisted in December after a youthful City side, with many of their first-team regulars rested, had just reached the semifinals of the Carabao Cup with a penalty shootout victory over Leicester City.

At the time, City were 16 matches into a top-flight record-breaking 18-game winning streak. A place in the Champions League last-16 was already secured after five wins from their opening five matches while their first game in the FA Cup was still more than two weeks away.

"The situation of winning 16 games in a row, qualifying for the Champions League two games before the group stage has finished and now playing here with a lot of young players -- that is not normal in football," Guardiola added.

City's form has been so incessant that their targets have been recalibrated to unrealistic proportions. Guardiola, despite being at the centre of it all, is perhaps the only one that has maintained a clarity through the fuzz of hysteria.

"The Premier League season is long, and we must only think of the next game," he said with characteristic pragmatism after the defeat to Liverpool.