Manuel Pellegrini has spoken about how he wants a repeat performance of the win last time out in the Champions League against Sevilla when his side take on Juventus on Wednesday.
He urged his side to put the disappointing thrashing by Liverpool at the weekend behind them as they travel to Turin to take on the Italian champions.
City won 3-1 last time out in Sevilla, a win that secured a place in the last 16 with two games remaining against Juventus and Borussia Monchengladbach.
A win against Juventus would secure the top spot in the group, meaning City would likely take on weaker opposition in the first knockout round.
Pellegrini spoke at the pre-match press conference about how his players had moved on from the defeat last time out, and were raring to go for tomorrow’s game.
We finished with the game that we played, a very bad game on Saturday, on Sunday morning.
You can’t take the game on Saturday as the normal performance of our team.
We need to play in Europe the same way as we did against Sevilla. We didn’t allow them chances and we had a lot of chances.
Juventus have a very strong side. That’s why they won four straight titles and reached last year’s Champions League final.
Pellegrini also sees the importance of finishing top of the group after City have exited the competition to the hands of Barcelona on consecutive occasions.
I think it is very important to qualify for the third time in a row for the next stage of the Champions League.
We qualified for the last two years and we were very unlucky to have the same draw against Barcelona.
It is very important to finish top of the group, not just to avoid Barcelona, but to beat a big team like this in Turin.
I thought we were very unlucky when we lost the first game in our stadium [a 2-1 defeat on matchday one] so I hope that tomorrow we will return to our normal performance.
