The striker's absence snuffed out City's hopes in Madrid before a ball had been kicked — and that's a bad sign

Preview, watch live, prediction for Man City v LiverpoolPep Guardiola's City are reeling from their midweek defeat at Real Madrid which saw them knocked out of the UEFA Champions League. They have injury doubts over big players but have picked up plenty of wins in the Premier League in recent weeks to suggest they will finish in the top four but are surely too far behind to mount a late surge for the title.

Real Madrid have won the away first leg of a European tie on 40 occasions. If Pep Guardiola wants a sense of how hard the task ahead of them is it is perhaps encapsulated in one statistic -- only on two of the previous 39 occasions have Los Merengues been eliminated from European competition.