Pep Guardiola has warned his Manchester City side they will have to play "almost perfectly" on Tuesday if they are not to suffer again at the hands of Barcelona and leave their hopes of qualifying for the Champions League knockout stages in peril.
Two weeks after losing 4-0 at Camp Nou, the two sides renew acquaintances in Manchester with Guardiola knowing that another defeat against his former club could have costly repercussions if Borussia Monchengladbach beat Celtic to move behind the Catalan club at the top of Group C.
That would mean City travelling to Germany to face Monchengladbach on 23rd November knowing that a defeat would put them out of the competition. Barcelona’s visit, according to Guardiola, now represents “a final” and he has told his players they cannot be mentally affected by their previous disappointment.
“I’ve never thought ’we cannot win a football match’ and I will never start to think that way,” he said. “I have never entered a match thinking we can’t win but we know we have to play almost perfectly to win. If not, we congratulate them and set our minds on the game against Celtic [on December 6th]and in Monchengladbach.
“We have to win two games from three, or at least get a draw and a win. We play the best tomorrow and we’re going to try to win. I think we know what we have to do to beat them and hopefully our quality up front will make a difference. We have to play like a final. It’s not a final for them, it is for us. It’s just three games left and we dropped two points in Glasgow, so we have to recover those points in the next two games.”
City have lost their five previous encounters with Barcelona and in four of those the current Premier League leaders have been reduced to men because of a red card.
Manuel Pellegrini regularly referred to the various dismissals for Martin Demichelis, Pablo Zabaleta and Gael Clichy to explain why City always struggled against Barcelona during his time as manager, and the same happened with Claudio Bravo’s sending-off as Lionel Messi tormented Guardiola’s team with a hat-trick performance a fortnight ago.
“When you lose that way the only thing you can do is learn,” Guardiola said. “You have to learn. It’s always difficult against Barcelona, 11 versus 11, but when it’s 10 versus 11 it’s almost impossible. Manuel lived through that; sometimes [the red cards were] unfair, last time it was from a mistake. But at that level it’s impossible to achieve your targets if you don’t keep your discipline.”
On that point, Guardiola has admonished Nolito for his behaviour in Saturday’s 4-0 win at West Bromwich Albion when the winger pushed his head against Craig Dawson but was let off with only a yellow card. Nolito has already been banned because of a similar offence when City played Bournemouth earlier in the season and Guardiola has told the £13.8m signing he needs to show more restraint.
“I had no intention to hurt any other player,“ Nolito said. “I have to show and set an example for children and other players and hopefully it won’t happen again.”
(Guardian service)
