Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City face a make or break Champions League clash against Belgian side Club Brugge and the Spaniard has revealed his real motivations for victory
Pep Guardiola insists he has made too much money for Manchester City to panic about the financial consequences of Champions League humiliation.
For the City boss, the must-win clash with Club Brugge at the Etihad, is about kudos rather than cash. Failure to beat the Belgians would see the four-in-a-row Premier League champions dumped out in the group stages and cost the club a minimum of around £10million after budgeting to at least make the last 16.
But the bottom line for Guardiola is about rescuing City’s floundering season after suffering the biggest crisis of his managerial career over the last three months. Guardiola said: “I don’t know about the finances. I didn’t speak with my CEO about that.
“In the last two, three or four years we have always made money in the transfer windows and they always say that the budget is positive. Of course, I’m not naive enough to not know how important it is financially for the club to go through in this competition.
“We want to try to go through – but especially for sporting reasons. Like I have said many times recently, for five or six years, the net spend has been amazing at this club.”
City have been the only Premier League club to flex their financial muscles during the current transfer window, investing more than £130million to bring in Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov, Vitor Reis and Juma Bah.
The quartet are ineligible for the clash against a Brugge side that is unbeaten in 20 matches. The Belgians need just a draw to reach the play-offs and could even sneak into the top eight to claim an automatic place in the last 16 if they win and other results go their way.
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City collapsed to a 4-2 defeat at Paris St Germain last week after squandering a two-goal lead. Earlier in the competition they drew against Feyenoord after building a 3-0 lead with just 15 minutes to play.
But the Blues, who have won just two of seven group games, produced their best performance in months to come from behind to beat Chelsea at the Etihad on Saturday night – and Guardiola has called on the fans to once again turn up the volume. He has no fresh injury concerns and will welcome Oscar Bobb back into the squad with the Norwegian winger now fully fit after breaking a leg in pre-season.
Guardiola said: “If the fans come we’ll be fine. If we perform well and we are in a good rhythm they will be there like they were in the last game against Chelsea. We felt more than ever this season that they were with us – even when we started and it was really tough.
“I know the opponent we are going to face. In the last 20 games they haven’t lost. I saw when they beat Juventus and they are incredible, solid, consistent, they don’t concede chances, they are aggressive. We would like to score a lot of goals in the first 20 minutes, but I think it’s not going to happen.
“I know that in this type of game you have to show something special, something that has not been enough so far in the Champions League for us to win the games. The question is simple. If we don’t win, we’ll be out. If we win, we’ll go through. Sooner or later you have to play this type of game that when you win, you go through and when you don’t win, you are out.”
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