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Man City talking points
- Updated: October 19, 2016
Pep Guardiola’s return to Barcelona with Manchester City in the Champions League didn’t go well as his side were beaten 4-0 in the Nou Camp.
Lionel Messi opened the scoring with a fine finish and then added two more after Claudio Bravo was sent off for handball following an error by the goalkeeper with the ball at his feet.
Neymar scored to put the seal on a successful night for Barca and leave City well beaten. Here, we pick out five of the talking points from the game.
Vulnerability exposed
There’s nothing new about Manchester City making costly defensive mistakes in the Champions League. Joe Hart and Fernando contrived to come up with a classic of the genre against Paris Saint-Germain in April. The worry is that they keep making them.
Against Barcelona, there was Fernandinho’s slip for the first goal, Bravo’s error that led to his red card, sloppiness from Ilkay Gundogan and John Stones for the third as well as Aleksandar Kolarov’s lunge to concede a penalty. And they were just the edited lowlights.
City are currently conceding a goal a game in the Premier League. Only one of the last 16 title winners have done that. While current champions Leicester are yet to concede in the Champions League, City have now let in seven in two games. It could yet cost them.
Bravo’s bad mistake
“It’s going to happen when you use the goalkeeper that he makes a wrong pass and you receive a goal,” Pep Guardiola told Sky Sports reporter Geoff Shreeves earlier this season. “People will say, ‘Why don’t you hit the ball [long]?’ but we have to insist on that.”
Guardiola understands that when the …
