New midfield hierarchy, key man dropped - How Man City must respond to Real Madrid reality check

The Manchester City dressing room was 'angry' after the Real Madrid collapse. They sure looked it as they trudged off and into the dressing room. And again when they left the Etihad.

But as City woke up on Wednesday, that anger must turn into the belief Ruben Dias implored his teammates to find ahead of the second leg.

And then the same players must forget everything about Madrid and next week's second leg. There is a huge fixture first on Saturday that could make or break their top four hopes - Newcastle are behind City in fifth only by goal difference and a gap would be a significant boost to their Champions League qualification hopes.

"Once we’ve reviewed it, digested it and we’ve seen the game clearer – we’ll have a better picture and better vision for going forward," Stones reflected. We have to be very self-critical and maybe have some tough discussions between us and try and put things right."

Those discussions should centre around the first 30 minutes against Real that looked so promising.

John Stones was waltzing around the midfield like he was in Istanbul, casually against the best team in the world. Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake were throwing themselves infront of everything. Josko Gvardiol was setting up goals and keeping Rodrygo quiet at the same time, and Manu Akanji was blocking Vinicius on the other side.

The four centre-backs worked in 2023 and it looked to be the route out of City's rut in 2025. But then Akanji went off, the system folded, and Madrid took advantage.

Guardiola turned to Mateo Kovacic to see out the game which proved to be a mistake as his kung-fu kick in injury time was the first domino to fall in a calamitous move. If Nico Gonzalez was either fitter or longer into his City career, maybe he