Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini deemed Champions League qualification ‘not impossible’ despite his side’s 2-1 defeat to CSKA Moscow.
After having Fernandinho and Yaya Toure sent off, the Blues now need to beat both Roma and Bayern Munich to stand a realistic chance of getting out of the group.
However, Pellegrini was adamant that his side could not give up on the knockout stages despite the dreary performance.
“If you have a mathematical chance to qualify you must try for it,” said the Chilean manager.
“First we must try to beat QPR, we have an international break and after that of course will try to qualify for the next stage.
“It is more difficult but not impossible.”
The referee was at the centre of controversy in Wednesday night’s encounter, sending off two City players and then booking the wrong player after a foul by an already booked Pontus Wernbloom.
“In this game the difference was not just the referee’s mistakes,” said Pellegrini.
“We cannot play in the way we played today if we want to win.
“I don’t want to have any excuses about the way we played and I don’t want to link the referee with the result. It is difficult to understand why we played such a low performance today.”
Pellegrini’s captain, Vincent Kompany was less quick to dismiss the referee’s performance, but still emphasised that his own side were sub-standard at best.
“We’ve been extremely unlucky lately,” said the 28-year-old. “I’m not even going to talk about the referee. Giving the wrong man the yellow card is laughable.
“We probably made more mistakes than the referee today, but luck has to start going our way.
“The positive out of the game is that we were down to 9 men but I was really proud of how we played.
“In those last 20 minutes everyone gave everything, but the first 70 minutes were pretty disappointing.”
City’s last game before the international break is at Loftus Road, against a QPR side who sit just one place from the foot of the table.
Kompany added: “Maybe one of the good things about football is there’s always another chance. We need to realise that we need to do better,”
Image courtesy of Manchester City, via Youtube, with thanks.
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