Manchester City were left facing the prospect of another unforgiving draw for the knockout phase of the Champions League after conceding their second successive defeat to Juventus in a 1-0 reverse on Wednesday.
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“I think we were very unlucky to lose this game – I think the minimum we deserved was a draw”.
To lose Hart for the weekend clash with Southampton would be another major blow with the England goalkeeper having been in fine form this season.
Claudio Marchisio’s awful backpass was intercepted by Aguero, who tried to round the Juventus goalkeeper but Buffon did brilliantly to block the Argentina forward and force the ball out for a corner.
Allegri was greeted with suspicion and even hostility by Juventus fans when he replaced Antonio Conte last season but quickly won them over as his team won a league and cup double and reached the Champions League final.
“I prefer to be qualified now”, he said.
But the City boss reckons if Arsenal and Manchester United crash out of the Champions League at the group stages – as both are in danger of – it will boost their rivals’ chances of winning the title.
“Vincent doesn’t have any chance to play this week because he’s not started running already, so he has two weeks more”, he said in a news conference in Turin. They’re full of quality but it’s a game for us to relish. We had the first chance to score with Fernandinho, but we didn’t take it.
Lars Stindl scored twice for Gladbach either side of a brilliant Fabian Johnson goal and a Raffael strike with Vitolo and Ever Banega, from a penalty, replying for Sevilla. “We will see on Thursday the medical report about the other players and then we will see the team that must start on Saturday against Southampton”. When we were playing against a proper team like Barcelona or Bayern Munich or Real Madrid, we knew we had to play five in midfield and gone for dear life and try and get through. “We missed quite a lot of injured players, but we have to deal with that, we have a fantastic squad”.
“It should be an entertaining game but we’ll need to be at our best to get something”.
“It’s always important to relate what we are doing because maybe when you qualify for the next stage of the Champions League that was the week that we had a descent in our performance”.
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“It was a game with plenty of chances from both sides”.
