Pep Guardiola said Manchester City’s 5-2 humbling by Leicester was a result of his players lacking stability and belief, after a rampant Jamie Vardy scored a hat-trick for the visitors. While Brendan Rodgers’s side have a maximum nine points from their opening three matches, City have three from two. Despite registering first via an early Riyad Mahrez goal, Guardiola admitted his team then lost their way. “We played for 30 minutes so good – we scored a goal in [the fourth] minute,” said the manager. “But then we started to believe we were not playing good when it was the opposite. We are not strong enough to be stable and patient. We started to think we were playing bad. We told them at half-time they were playing good, try to be patient and the rest will be in our hands.” Guardiola brushed off any concerns over dropping points so early in the title race. “We have to accept it,” he said. “But it’s still only the second game.” Vardy scored from two penalties, after 37 and 58 minutes, that sandwiched a flicked goal. Youri Tielemans converted Leicester’s third penalty late in the second half, and that followed a memorable 20-yard finish from James Maddison. Nathan Aké scored Manchester City’s second. “To beat Man City you have to run like hell,” said Rodgers. “So you have to have that mentality. The tactical discipline was good and because of their counter-press you have to get your passes off quick. We fell behind to a brilliant finish. We showed good composure and stayed calm and showed enough that we could cause them a problem.” Leicester’s manager was rewarded for a tactical switch under which his side took on a counterattacking approach. “It was a brilliant performance and result. It has taken me 13 years to play that way – I’m very much about attacking and being aggressive,” Rodgers said. “I always try to be positive but I need to think of other ways to get results in these games. We took out the press from the goal-kicks and went direct but overall the players had to work very hard.” Vardy said: “We knew we wouldn’t have much of the ball so we set up to infuriate them a bit, try and keep the likes of Rodri [a holding midfielder] off the ball.”