Pep Guardiola has challenged his Manchester City players to prepare for their Champions League showdown with Real Madrid by winning the FA Cup.
City will face Real in the end-of-season mini-tournament when they return to European action and having passed their Premier League crown to Liverpool last week, they are determined to add another trophy to their collection before locking horns with the Spanish giants.
They took a significant step towards doing so on Sunday when they booked an FA Cup semi-final with Arsenal by beating Newcastle 2-0 at St James’ Park, and Guardiola is in no mood to let his men stop there.
It proved a disappointing evening for Magpies head coach Steve Bruce, who admitted his side’s first-half display had not been good enough.
He said: “When you’re playing against teams like this, you can’t make the type of mistake we have done for the penalty. Unfortunately, we gave a poor, poor penalty away and it’s difficult enough because of the ability they’ve got.
“In the second half, we were much better and brighter, and the big turning point – could we have made it a really good cup tie had we equalised?
“Who knows whether we would have been able to go on from there, but we were certainly better in the second half.”
