Although, PSG have the necessary elements in their arsenal to topple Man City, the away goals can enable the English side to adopt a defensive stance to the game, which may work to City’s advantage. “We still have 90 minutes ahead of us in Manchester but this is a good result”, said the Chilean.
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“I don’t know if we were weak but there were many mistakes in terms of building up our play and in two of these mistakes it allowed Man City to score important away goals”, said coach Laurent Blanc. “I don’t think City will just sit on their lead, but it is true that we will need to be much better defensively”, said Blanc, whose side must negotiate a league fixture at Guingamp this weekend, while City are at home to West Bromwich Albion in the Premier League. But we can’t take anything for granted. “I am pretty sure he is one player who you are not going to make change his mind or do anything that he doesn’t want to do”. “We’ll have to win there”. Unfortunately for us in the second half, the second goal of Paris Saint-Germain was absolutely offside.
Manchester City have left themselves in a great position in the Champions League after their first-leg fixture with Paris Saint-Germain.
With both sides edgy, there were plenty of scrappy fouls, with Luiz shown a yellow card inside the first minute for bringing down striker Sergio Aguero.
“But the team believe in what we do, and we always try to play attacking and try to score, and we scored that second goal”.
Asked if Belgium’s needs affected his thinking, Pellegrini said at a press conference: “No, I am not concerned about their opinion”.
“But it’s a game of 180 minutes. So if we manage to give the same performance, without committing the same mistakes, we can go through”.
“They are a very good team with very good players”.
Meanwhile, Hart was proud of the way City battled back to secure a draw in a “crazy game”.
He missed a glorious chance after being played through on goal by midfielder Thiago Motta with the goal gaping at his mercy – perhaps he has Joe Hart to blame for that – after the England keeper made a magnificent save from Ibrahimovic’s penalty.
PSG then hit the front just on the hour-mark thanks to Adrien Rabiot, only for City to equalise with 18 minutes remaining as Fernandinho pounced on some sloppy defending inside the penalty area.
Last October Kompany was named in the squad for the Euro 2016 qualifiers against Andorra and Israel by Wilmots, despite Kompany having been out since 15 September after his injury in the defeat by Juventus, and Pellegrini saying he could not play.
Uefa tweeted after the match that 79.4 per cent of teams to have taken a 2-2 draw into a home second leg have gone on to qualify for the next round.
Zinedine Zidane admitted Real Madrid suffered an El Clasico hangover as they crashed to a 2-0 Champions League quarterfinal first-leg defeat at Wolfsburg on Wednesday.
“I think it’s still open for both teams”.
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Pellegrini is leaving City at the end of the season to make way for Pep Guardiola but remains unwilling to discuss his future, despite recent links with the vacancy at Valencia.
