Joe Hart has revealed that he had little choice but to depart on loan for Torino as Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola did not show enough faith in his ability.

The England international will spend the rest of the season in the Italian top flight after dropping down the Citizens' pecking order under new boss Guardiola.

Hart played 348 matches across 10 years for City and had become a regular in recent years, but Claudio Bravo was brought in on a permanent transfer from Barcelona due to his ability to play the ball out from the back.

Speaking to reporters after helping England to a 2-0 win over Malta on Saturday, Hart opened up on his move to Italy and declared that he is still improving his all-round game in the wake of recent criticism.

"Football is a game of opinions and some people have a great opinion of me and some people probably think I'm absolutely useless," he said. "Unfortunately for me, one of the guy's opinions in charge of my club at the time wasn't as strong as it needed to be, so I needed to find someone who had an opinion of me who thought I could help their team.

"I need to improve and improve all the time because I'm still learning the game and the game is changing all the time. I love trying to improve, I love that challenge. I want to keep developing until I physically can't. I'm not going to lie, I wasn't sat there with 25 options [of clubs to join].

"Torino was a really good option for me and it definitely excited me to go to play in Serie A and to play for Torino. That fit, in the situation I was in, was a good decision. It's not about making brave decisions. It was a decision I had to make and was comfortable with. I felt I was capable of doing it and where my options were, it was the best one for me in my opinion."

Since joining Torino last month, Hart has kept two clean sheets - coming in successive games - in five appearances for the club.