A point would leave City on course to progress to the knock-out stages of Europe’s premier tournament. Konoplyanko one of their summer signings has had a spectacular start to his Sevilla career and looked threathening every time he got on the ball against City last time out.
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‘We’ll be patient. What I see is that we’re a well-organised team who, if it becomes a hard game, we can be very solid – but obviously, if we play well, we can beat any team and hopefully we can go to Sevilla with a really positive attitude and get the result we need.
City will take on Juventus in their next Champions League fixture on Wednesday, November 25.
But recently he has found the net with more regularity, scoring for England against Estonia and hitting a hat-trick for City against Bournemouth last month, and his play on Tuesday certainly hinted that he has the potential to score far more.
The team’s qualification means City have now reached the knockout stage of Europe’s elite tounament in record time, which was aided in part by Juventus’ drawing 1-1 with Borussia Monchengladbach in the group’s other game.
The Sevilla faithful also afforded a hero’s welcome to Jesus Navas as the City winger returned to his hometown club, where he spent 10 years before moving to Manchester 2013.
“It is very important”, he said.
“I’m very happy because I was not happy with the way we were playing, so we needed a change”, he said. “I think Fernandinho came and said it was someone else [who should take it], so I left it. Kolarov came and he missed it. Luckily it didn’t affect the three points”.
Sevilla coach Unai Emery has admitted his side have no chance of winning the Champions League and says their priority is to perform well in La Liga so they can secure a lucrative berth in the competition again for next season.
There are also reports that it could have been started by fans of Polish team Slask Wroclaw, who provided a payback from an attack by Sevilla fans two years ago in the UEFA Europa League. Our team has quality, but we haven’t proved it and that’s why we lost the game.
“We have two games more to try to qualify if we don’t do it tomorrow, or to try to win the group if we do it tomorrow”.
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Real have ten points from four games in Group A while PSG, who suffered their first defeat in all competitions this season, are second with seven.
