Pep Talk: “ We are playing the King of this competition...”

Pep Guardiola has spoken ahead of the massive game v Real Madrid. He touched on a variety of topics including Madrid status as a European elite and injury updates. From the top he praised Madrid as ‘The king of this competition’ and that much is true with their 13 titles.

Let’s get to the rest.

Pep on injuries-

“Raheem is fit,”

“His natural physical condition, his regeneration, is amazing. He said to us he could play the West Ham game or the previous one against Leicester.”

“The doctor said be careful because of the time. Muscular injuries are always three weeks or month and after 15 days he wanted to play. That is a good sign.

”He is fit. He is ready.”

Pep on the game-

“You need to play good, first of all,” he explained.

“You have to be strong and be quality and be many things. And you need luck, yes.

“In the knockout stage, the decisions at certain points are important. But we cannot control that.

“What we can control is to play as good as possible and then we will see. It is what it is.

“In this competition we saw last season and in previous ones, when we played Liverpool, you play for 180 minutes against quality opponents and in some moments the decision takes it off you.”

“You have to overcome things, like we did against Leicester,” he added.

“We missed a penalty again but the reaction after that was exceptional. In this kind of competition that’s what we need.

“We have to have incredible concentration in our game plan and what we have to do and of course, try to be a little lucky in the decisions we cannot control.

”But I am not going to be worrying about that or be talking to the players, because we cannot control it.”

That’s it for this game. How do we feel going in to the game?