The Sport Matrix: Thursday 13 March 2014

Messi and Alves knock out City

Manchester City followed Arsenal out of the Champions League, losing 2-1 to Barcelona on the night to go down 4-1 on aggregate. Lionel Messi and Dani Alves scored either side of Vincent Kompany’s consolation goal. PSG wrapped up a 6-1 aggregate win over Bayer Leverkusen. MORE

Burnley held in Birmingham thriller

Burnley threw away the lead three times at Birmingham as a 3-3 draw lost them ground on Championship leaders Leicester. Wigan moved level on points with Reading in the final play-off spot after a late Jordi Gomez penalty earned a 1-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday. MORE

Spurs ‘got stressed’ in crisis meeting

Tottenham’s players held frank discussions after Saturday’s 4-0 humbling at Chelsea. “We had a meeting,” midfielder Sandro said. “Sometimes one player got stressed and we tried to calm him and talk in a nice way. We spent about two hours. Every player had their fair share to say.” MORE

Arteta: Arsenal can take positives

Mikel Arteta believes Arsenal can take positives from their performance at Bayern Munich on Tuesday. “It’s encouraging,” he said of the 1-1 draw. “The second-half performance was very good. We can take a lot of positives. And the way we keep them pretty quiet as well.” MORE

Sire De Grugy gives Moores debut win

Sire De Grugy won the Betvictor Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham, Jamie Moore winning by six lengths ahead to give Moore & Son a first ride into the Festival’s winning circle. 2011 winner Sizing Europe finished fourth. MORE

Giles: England T20 hopes receding

Coach Ashley Giles says England’s recent T20 failures means they will be unfancied at the World Twenty20. “We’ve lost five in a row. Clearly we’re not playing very good T20 and haven’t done for a period now,” said Giles. “We’ll go into that as underdogs.” MORE

Schumacher family remain confident

The family of Michael Schumacher remain confident that the seven-time world champion will make a recovery from his skiing accident, contrary to recent speculation about the former Formula One champion’s state of health. MORE

British duo ready to go all out for gold

British skiers Jade Etherington and Caroline Powell will risk losing a fourth Games medal as they seek an elusive gold. They missed out in the slalom but may now go for broke in tomorrow’s Super Combined, where they currently lie second. MORE

Thomas and Cav lead the way

Geraint Thomas finished second in the fourth stage of the Paris-Nice to take the yellow jersey. Elsewhere, fellow Briton Mark Cavendish took the opening-day overall lead in the week-long Tirreno-Adriatico.

Chris Robshaw

“We can see [beating Wales] as a bridge crossed. We lost in 2012 [and] last time, and with them being in our World Cup pool, it would have left us with a huge task. We hadn’t beaten them. Now, we have.” MORE