Manchester City travel to Goodison Park on Wednesday night to face Everton, and both teams have a lot on the line to play for.

The hosts badly need to arrest a poor run of form that has seen them win just three of their last 12 league games, while the visitors need to pick up all three points in order to move to the top of the league table for the first time since early December.

Everton manager Marco Silva is under pressure to start leading the team to the desired results, and his side were booed off at the end of weekend’s 3-1 home loss to Wolves.

City boss Pep Guardiola has however leapt to the Portuguese’s defence, telling the fans and club to give their manager time.

“Everton were booed off during the weekend and Marco Silva seems to be a bit under pressure. Do you think that might make for a strange atmosphere tomorrow night,” a reporter asked Guardiola during Tuesday’s press conference.

“The people don’t know how difficult it is to create the teams. The people believe you buy three or four players, a new manager, and everything fits perfectly immediately. Sometimes it takes time,” the Spaniard replied.

“My advice… if they believe in the project, if they believe in him, they have to move forward with him, but nobody assures you a new manager is going to better. It’s difficult to create, to build something. You need time, it takes time. So it depends on them if they trust (him) or not.”

Everton spent heavily during the summer transfer window to secure the services of Richarlison, Yerry Mina and Lucas Digne, while Kurt Zouma and Andre Gomes were also secured on loan deals.

However, the investment isn’t yielding fruits yet, with Silva’s side managing to secure just nine wins and six draws in their opening 25 games of the 2018-19 Premier League season.

As Pep rightly pointed out, building a team under a new manager takes time, and Everton and their fans will have to exercise lots of patience with their manager going forward.