Hart harnesses City focus

Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart said his side must concentrate on their own progress in the Premier League, rather than their rivals.

City comprehensively defeated Fulham 3-0 at the weekend to open up a two-point gap to Manchester United at the top of the table, after Sir Alex Ferguson’s men had to come back from three goals down at Chelsea to earn a draw.

United face Liverpool on Saturday to kick-off a run of difficult fixtures for the English champions, but Hart believes City should only look ahead to their own games and not get distracted by opportunities where their rivals might drop points.

“We can only concentrate on ourselves,” Hart told reporters. “I don’t think we know their fixtures, and I’m sure they don’t know ours.”

“They’ve just got to focus on what they’re doing, and we’ll do what we can do to help ourselves. We can only do that by winning.”

“We’ve got a lot more things on our plate than worrying about Man United. We’ve got a big game against Villa coming up and we’ve got really important teams to play against.”

“Whoever is in the chasing pack, or involved in the title race, will do what they’ve got to do. I’m pretty sure they don’t care what’s going on elsewhere.”

The England international has 10 clean sheets to his name this season in the league, but Hart admits sloppy defending has led to City conceding more than they should as the 24-year-old sets his sights on successive Golden Glove awards.

“It was just great to beat Fulham and keep a clean sheet,” he said. “We should have had about 15 clean sheets this season, but we’ve let in some sloppy goals after battering teams so it was nice to finish it 3-0.”

“I do count our number of clean sheets because we pride ourselves on them at the back and it all adds up at the end of the season.”