Trailing 1-0 to Everton at halftime, Manchester City didn't much look like the newly crowned Club World Cup champion despite the new golden FIFA badge on the front of the players' shirts.
But Pep Guardiola had a simple message to his players at the break.
“The manager (told us) at halftime to just keep believing, we haven't got this badge for no reason,” City midfielder Phil Foden said.
"In the second half, yeah, wow, I think we blew them away with the way we played.”
Foden started the comeback by equalizing in the 53rd minute, before Julian Alvarez's penalty and a late goal by Bernardo Silva secured a 3-1 win at Everton to put the defending champions back into the Premier League's top four.
“That's why we're the world champions. The best team in the world,” Guardiola said with a smile in a post-game interview on Amazon Prime. “Now I'm going to remind them every day. We have a standard to keep.”
The trip to Saudi Arabia for the Club World Cup was perhaps a bit of a distraction and allowed rivals Liverpool and Arsenal to widen the gap at the top. But City now can now fully refocus on the task of winning an unprecedented fourth straight Premier League title, and this was a vital first step in showing that it can't be counted out despite a recent poor run of form.
City is five points behind leader Liverpool with a game in hand, while Arsenal can go six points ahead of Guardiola's team by beating West Ham on Thursday.
“We know after six games with just one win, the people were asking, which is normal because it is all about results,” Guardiola said about his team's recent run. “I have a feeling this team, we're going to be there.”
Even with Erling Haaland still out with a foot injury, City showed it has more than enough attacking threat to turn things around against a team that had beaten Newcastle and Chelsea in its last two league home games. But it came as a cost as center back John Stones had to go off with an ankle injury before halftime.
“It doesn't look good," Guardiola said about the injury, "but we will see.”
