Pep Guardiola admitted he “lied” after Manchester City lost the first leg of their Champions League ­playoff against Real Madrid and that their chances of going through are better than the 1% he gave them that night. However, he conceded that the situation is still not ideal and his team will need an “almost perfect” performance at the Santiago Bernabéu to progress. “At the least,” the City manager said, “we have to give them a fright”.

Asked about Jude Bellingham’s sending-off on Saturday, the mana­ger revealed that after eight years in England “I still haven’t worked out the difference between fuck off and fuck you – but what ­matters is the intention, not the insult [itself]”.

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