Man City 'can get back what they deserve' in Champions League after Tottenham heartbreak, says Pep Guardiola

Heartbreak: Manchester City exited the Champions League in dramatic fashion on Wednesday
PA

Pep Guardiola has told his Manchester City players to use the pain of their Champions League exit to fire their treble pursuit.

City crashed out of Europe in agonising circumstances on Wednesday night - losing on away goals to Tottenham.

Raheem Sterling looked to have secured an injury-time winner, only to see the Etihad’s celebrations cut short by VAR.

Rather than brushing off elimination and the end of their quadruple hopes, Guardiola insists it is vital his players embrace the pain and use it as motivation.

“If you believe it doesn’t hurt, or we forget about it, I’d say no,” said the Catalan ahead of Saturday’s lunchtime Premier League clash with Spurs.

In Pictures | Man City vs Tottenham, Champions League | 17/04/2019

1/64

“I want to see that my players know what they did on Wednesday.

“It will take time, we have to live with that feeling. What we lived last Wednesday, it was incredible, we were lucky to live it.

“More than 55,000 people were happy then devastated in a second. There is not an activity in this world that you can put in these limits.

“It will remain in our hearts because in the future. The performance we did was incredible at this level. That’s what it is.

“I don’t want to see them saying it doesn’t matter - more that we were close. It will be on our minds, but looking back on it will help us to move forward.

“These players have the opportunity to show they can do that. They can get back what they deserve, this season or next or in three or four years.

“They will be in the same position and they’ll be luckier and go to the next stages.”

Aleks Zinchenko is back in training after recovering from a hamstring strain and Guardiola will assess him before picking his team for the 12:30pm GMT kick off.

“We have to win tomorrow,” added Guardiola. “That’s the title race. What Liverpool do against Cardiff or Newcastle, I’m not involved.

“We have games v Tottenham, United and Burnley. The rest I cannot control.

“I hope for the best. We have five games in the Premier League and tomorrow is another game and we’ll see (how we react)."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in