Manchester City face momentous task with clear minds but Champions League history favours Liverpool

The extremity of the situation might give City focus but only 11 sides in the competition’s 63-year history have overturned a first-leg deficit of at least three goals to go through

Within the Manchester City squad, the angry frustration from the last week has built to a colder and focused “fury”. They know they need to make a point, and to make a statement… in order to make history. That’s how massive the task for this Champions League quarter-final second leg against Liverpool has become – “a mountain” as Pep Guardiola described it – that’s what it comes down to. Only 11 sides in the competition’s 63-year history have overturned a first-leg deficit of at least three goals to go through. And if there is little precedent to take solace from in the trophy’s past, there is even less from City’s past.

This is something that has been touched on a lot around a tie with a club as gloriously successful in the competition as Liverpool, and something Guardiola himself acknowledged when asked about the issue.

“We need titles in Europe,” the Catalan said. “It’s so complicated, but you need nights that make the people understand it.”

If City have so far lacked the exhilarating experience of a night like that in the continent’s top competition, though, Guardiola himself has not. He has been there for plenty. And, although the negatives of the last five days have meant so much has been especially focused on the manager – and particularly his failings – that focus could now be a positive. Guardiola is one of the few people in the club that does really understand nights like this.

He has been present for some of the most famous such nights, and specifically one of those five ties where a lead of three goals or more was overturned. It led to one of the most famous photos of Guardiola’s life. That was the image of the current City manager as a mere 14-year-old and Barcelona ball-boy, hugging Victor Munoz after Pichi Alonso had scored a hat-trick at Camp Nou to cancel out IFK Gothenburg’s 3-0 1985-86 semi-final first-leg lead. The Catalans went through to the final on penalties, under Terry Venables. There is another photo of Guardiola looking up joyously and clapping his hands just yards from Venables while the manager is held aloft.

As one of those football people who really invests in the lore of the game, and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of such nights, Guardiola also knows better than most the distinctive nature of such games; their frenetic rhythm.

He knows the importance of an early goal, how they can scramble the minds of the opposition, how conscious Liverpool will be of this on Wednesday.

Aside from immediately bolstering the chasing side with that extra belief and impetus required, it has the double effect of creating instant doubt in the opposition. This is what Real Madrid benefited from against Derby County in 1975-76 (Roberto Juan Martinez scoring after three minutes), Barcelona benefited from against Gothenburg in 1985-86 (Alonso, nine minutes), Deportivo la Coruna benefited from against Milan in 2003-04 (Walter Pandiani, five minutes) and of course Barcelona against did against Paris Saint-Germain last season (Luis Suarez, two minutes).

Werder Bremen didn’t get an early goal against East German champions Dynamo Berlin in 1988-89, proving it isn’t essential, but did get one after 23 minutes and any side probably has to strike before half-time. That is as much to change the nature of the game as cut the deficit.

Guardiola also knows how, once that first goal goes in, the second leg isn’t so much about the scale of the comeback as about the chase. The dynamic changes. It becomes about minds and resolve, as much as the numbers and the result.

That is what this second leg will likely become if City can strike first and especially strike early. They will be empowered, Liverpool instantly under pressure.

Pulling it off would also be a first for Guardiola as a player and manager, but there is something of a precedent from his career, from three seasons. The Catalan’s Bayern Munich side were only 3-1 down to FC Porto in the 2014-15 quarter-finals, but the situation felt even worse now. Their “shambolic” – to repeat a word used in the German press – display from the first leg had been resoundingly criticised, and was seen as part of a deeper problem to go with the 4-0 thrashing to Real Madrid the previous season and the resignation of club doctor Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt. It led a lot of questions over whether Guardiola would even see his contract… but two emphatic responses.

One was the Catalan “100 per cent” insisting that it was his “future, next year, to be here”. The other was a devastating 6-1 second-leg victory to send them into the semi-finals.

That is what City remain capable of.

Barcelona completed a stunning comeback over PSG (Getty)

Regardless of any recent problems, they are one of about four sides in the world for whom the kind of goal glut required on Tuesday is as probable in any given game as a narrow win. As many as 15 of their 50 matches this season have produced a scoreline that would at least bring extra-time. One of those, of course, was against Liverpool.

Jurgen Klopp’s side are a much better team than that 2015 Porto, but they have their own frailties that are particularly subject to City’s strengths. They are frailties likely to be compounded by selection complications in midfield, where Guardiola’s side should still be so much stronger. Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva fully fired could wreak havoc there, and there’s no fire like that that comes from the humiliation of two seismic defeats to rivals. For all the focus on how Liverpool are especially suited to playing City, too, City’s movement is especially suited to a backline that can become as chaotic as Liverpool’s when panic sets in. The type of panic one goal can bring.

There’s also another potential twist here.

One of the justified arguments about Guardiola in the wake of the first-leg defeat – and so many similar 20-minute collapses in Europe – has been that he tends to needlessly over-think such first legs. It’s as if he gets so concerned with winning that he overly concentrates on little tweaks that actually negatively affect his own side’s overall plan as much as the opposition.

There is no need for such second-guessing or over-thinking now.

City have already gone behind. They’ve already suffered something that amounts to a worst-case scenario for the first leg.

The extremity of the situation, however, could help clear minds. It could give City that clarity of purpose that means they just focus on what they’re best at, overwhelming sides to score mountains of goals, because that is precisely what they need.

That’s what they know they need. Actually doing it, as the history proves, is another matter.

That’s why it’s so difficult. That’s why it could yet be so defining.