Pep Guardiola warns Man City stars they have just ‘1 per cent’ chance of coming back to knock out Real Madrid

Sponsored by. PEP GUARDIOLA says Manchester City will give everything to be part of the one per cent club when they travel to the Bernabeu on Wednesday. Their Champions League hopes are hanging by a thread after the dramatic 3-2 defeat to Real Madrid at the Etihad in the first leg last week. However, City will travel to Spain and face their old rivals in good heart after their best performance of the season saw them thrash Newcastle 4-0 on Saturday.

Although they won against the kings of Europe on their own patch five years ago, Pep knows the odds are stacked against them repeating it. But he says that no matter how “minimal” the chance is they have to try to grab it against Carlo Ancelotti’s holders. Guardiola said: “It’s better to travel to Madrid with this result [4-0 against Newcastle], than with a last-minute defeat, or any defeat.

“So of course, the victory helps us, but the margin to win in Bernabeu in that position, everybody knows what it is. “If we’d kept the 2-1 lead we had with five minutes to go, it would be different but with 2-3 we know what the chance is. The result was not good. “If you ask before the game what the percentage to go through is, we’d arrive at about one per cent or I don’t know what. “It will be minimal, but as much as you have a chance, we will try, that’s for sure.

CASINO SPECIAL - BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS. “Like we always do — so let’s see what happens.”. City fans took great heart from their dominant performance against the Toon –— who are rivalling them for a top four spot this season. But the manager is refusing to get carried away by one result and feels the issues that have held them back in recent months still need to be resolved. He said: “This season, the reality is we have been miles, miles away.

“If we’d performed like we did on Saturday, would we have finished 22nd in the Champions League table?. “Of course not, we would have finished higher, but the reality is we have been really, really poor in performance in the results this season. “Just for one game, on Saturday, we played really good but it’s not going to change the opinion, the reality, the team. “We are still not good in terms of day by day.

“There are many, many games that we were playing the level we wanted to play and at the end, we lost it. “It was not just the three points, it’s how [it was] affecting our minds for the next game. It happened a lot of times.”. Guardiola decided against playing defensive pair Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake against Newcastle in the hope they may be ready to face Real Madrid on Wednesday. He brought in Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis in January — meaning he was able to give his regulars the afternoon off.