Matt Targett is wary of how Manchester City will react after being dumped out of the Champions League by Real Madrid. Pep Guardiola’s table-toppers were seconds away from a place in the final until two quick-fire goals from Rodrygo forced extra time.
A spot-kick from Karim Benzema then sealed their fate to secure a dramatic turnaround at the Bernabeu. Defeat for City means the Premier League is all they can win this season - and Newcastle United are the next team in their sights.
Magpies loanee Targett knows the champions will be “hurting” ahead of this weekend’s trip to the Etihad Stadium. He told the BBC Football Daily podcast: “They’ll be hurting for sure because over the two legs I think they've done more than enough to get through to the final.
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“They’ll be hurting a lot but they can't dwell on that as they know because they pretty much need to win every game to win the league because Liverpool are right on their tails. It’s going to be a good run-in and it‘ll be interesting to see what happens.”
Targett was also asked how he prefers to handle a defeat post-match after Guardiola confirmed he had not spoken to his players about the result. The left-back thinks the Spaniard made the right call to let the squad digest such a brutal outcome.
“Every player is different,” he added. “For me, thinking time would probably be the best. When you debrief it straight after a game it is still fresh and hurts a lot.
“That’s more difficult, but if you have time to go through it, you have a more of an understanding of what went wrong and what you need to work on. So I think he's done the right thing for sure.”
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