Pep Guardiola is entirely blameless in Man City's latest Champions League failure

"Football is unpredictable." That's how Pep Guardiola summed up Manchester City's heartbreaking elimination from the Champions League.

After Riyad Mahrez's second-half strike put City in a commanding 5-3 aggregate lead against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu, Guardiola could only watch from his technical area as his players conspired to collapse in truly remarkable fashion. Two goals in the space of 89 seconds from Rodrygo hauled Europe's comeback specialists level, before a Karim Benzema penalty early in the first period of extra-time finished City off.

Despite his post-match analysis, Guardiola did everything he could to predict how Real Madrid would play, and set his team up in a way to give them the best possible chance of progression. In the end, something unprecedented happened: for the first in six seasons, Guardiola was entirely blameless for City's Champions League elimination.

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From minute one to 120, Guardiola got everything spot on. Wednesday night was on the players. Guardiola admitted after the game that his side did not play well in the opening 45 minutes, but that they were rarely threatened by the hosts. That was largely because City did not allow Real Madrid to build any sort of momentum or string together more than five or six passes at a time.

Selecting Phil Foden and Gabriel Jesus in the front three allowed City to press Madrid relentlessly, forcing the likes of Eder Militao, Nacho Fernandez and Dani Carvajal into plenty of errors. On a night when City didn't actually need to score, Pep instructed Bernardo Silva to drop deep to receive the ball, forming a double-pivot with Rodri. This allowed City to keep