Manchester City suffered a second successive Premier League defeat after going down 4-2 at champions Leicester City on Saturday.

Pep Guardiola’s side were 2-0 down within five minutes thanks to goals from Jamie Vardy and Andy King, and the visitors never really recovered, conceding twice more to Vardy before Aleksandar Kolarov and Nolito hit back with consolations.

Following last weekend’s frustrating 3-1 defeat at home to Chelsea, Guardiola would have been hoping for a response from his players, yet he got nothing close to what he was looking for.

It now means that City have won just three of their last nine Premier League games, and now find themselves seven points adrift of league leaders Chelsea after their 1-0 win over West Brom on Sunday.

However, Guardiola’s men are still fourth and have only lost three of their 15 league games, so it’s not a crisis by any stretch just yet, but things need to improve, certainly defensively, if City are to challenge for the title in the second half of the season.

Thus, here are TWO City players in particular who must up their game…

Claudio Bravo

Claudio Bravo was brought in by Guardiola because he’s supposedly better with his feet than Joe Hart, who the City boss allowed to go out on loan for the season.

However, from what we’ve seen of the former Barcelona goalkeeper so far, he’s not actually that great with his feet, and he’s certainly not better than Hart as a shot-stopper.

The 33-year-old made a poor effort to save Willian’s strike for Chelsea last weekend, and he should have done better with King’s effort on Saturday.

These are the most recent two of many instances where Bravo has under-performed for City this season, and it surely can’t give any confidence to the defence in front of him.

The Chilean international must up his game if City are to tighten up at the back and sustain a title challenge in the second half of the season.

John Stones

Pretty much every single City defender could have been on this list, but John Stones is because he cost them £47.5 million in the summer, and is still making the same mistakes.

The England international likes to play the ball out from the back and work the play from there, just as Guardiola likes, but it has too often cost City this season.

And, despite it happening on a few occasions in recent weeks, the 22-year-old was once again at fault at the weekend, with his back-pass from the touchline easily intercepted by Jamie Vardy who, to be fair, finished brilliantly from a tough angle.

Guardiola will keep encouraging him to play like this, but how many more errors will it take for Stones to realise that you can’t play like that all the time?

The defender must improve his decision-making, and overall defensive displays, if City are to challenge for the title.