Sevilla boss Unai Emery is refusing to be too downbeat despite Tuesday’s defeat to Manchester City leaving their progress in the Champions League hanging by a thread.
The Spanish outfit lost 2-1 to City at the Etihad Stadium on October 21 but were on the wrong end of a 3-1 scoreline at Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan this week as City put on a master class of football.
Raheem Sterling and Fernandinho gave the visitors a 2-0 lead inside 11 minutes before Benoit Tremoulinas halved the deficit on 25 minutes
But Wilfried Bony’s 36th-minute strike made sure the points went back to Manchester and sent Manuel Pellegrini’s men into the last 16.
Sevilla have garnered only three points from their four Group D games and need to beat both Juventus and Borussia Monchengladbach and hope other results go their way to stand any chance of reaching the knock-out stage of Europe’s elite club competition.
Things have also been tough domestically for Los Nervionenses and they currently sit 11th in the La Liga standings having won just three of their 10 league games this term.
Los Rojiblancos face a battle to get back into the top four and will square off with Real Madrid at the weekend, with Emery’s charges on offer at 3.60 and Los Blancos priced at 1.95 to head back to the capital with the spoils.
But, far from wallow in his own self pity, Emery has urged his men to dig deep to get through a period of adversity.
“Football brings us to different paths but none are easy. The team is strong in difficulty,” he said. “We’re always united. We’ve a beautiful game on Sunday against Real Madrid and there is always hope.”
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