Pep Guardiola just isn’t giving Manchester City much of a probability of progressing to the quarter-finals of the Champions League after their first leg defeat to Real Madrid.
Los Blancos sealed a 3-0 win in the primary leg of their last 16 tie on Wednesday night with Federico Valverde scoring a sensational hat-trick within the Spanish capital.
Real were denied a fourth when Gianluigi Donnarumma saved Vinicius Jr’s penalty but City have all of it to do within the return leg in Manchester next week.
City crashed out of the competition on the play-off stage to the identical opposition last season and face one other early exit unless they will stage an enormous fightback on home turf.
But when asked what probability do City have of progressing to the subsequent round, Guardiola told a post-match press conference ‘At once, not much.
‘After all we’re going to try. Now the whole lot is tougher with our mindset but we will probably be there, we will probably be with our people, we will do more to be higher in the ultimate third and we’ll try.’
City are back in Premier League motion away to West Ham United on Saturday evening in a game where they can’t afford to drop any more points within the title race with Arsenal.
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Real then come to the Etihad next Tuesday.
‘Against teams like Real Madrid you recognize that as soon as you lose the ball that they’re just waiting to play a counter attack after which they rating,’ Jeremy Doku said.
‘They scored three goals after which it’s difficult to return back because they played very defensively, but I feel like if we scored the primary probabilities that we had it’s a unique game.
‘[Donnarumma’s save] helped us massively, we’re still confident.
‘Obviously we’ve a game against West Ham before, but we trust our qualities and we all know that on the Etihad it’s also a unique game.
‘We’ll need our fans to assist us and in the event that they can rating three goals why can’t we?’
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