City will need to overturn a three-goal deficit at the Etihad Stadium when we meet in our Round of 16 second leg on Tuesday 17 March.
The boss believes it will be a tall order but is hoping that the City fans can inspire his side to a remarkable turnaround against the 15-times winners of the trophy.
“Right now, not much,” he said when asked about City’s chances of reaching the quarter-finals. “Of course we’re going to try and it is difficult right now.
“But we will be there with our people and we will do better to be more active in the final third and we will try.”
Federico Valverde did all the damage for the home side with a first half hat-trick although it could have been worse had Gianluigi Donnarumma not saved Vinicius Junior’s penalty.
That could yet prove an important moment if we are to find a way past the Spanish giants in the second leg at the Etihad.
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“3-0 is better than four, we cannot deny that,” Guardiola said.
“It’s difficult sometimes to control transitions when we lose the ball and they connect, they don’t put the ball away and then players like Vinicius can run.
“I had the feeling that it was quite decent and well played.
“We arrived, I don’t know how many times, to the byline. Individual actions from Jeremy [Doku], long balls in the second half especially for Antoine [Semenyo] and Nico [O’Reilly] then passes in the six-yard box we were not able to [beat] Courtois.
“We miss that action in the first 50 minutes. The first goal was not well defended and then after that the quality they have.
“[It’s a] difficult result. Now we recover, go to West Ham and then with our people we will try.”
Guardiola said some attacking moments were promising but we were missing a clinical edge in the final third.
“I think we’ve tried to do our best but we didn’t create chances where Courtois had to intervene,” he added.
“We got into the box many times - when you are able to do that it means you have followed a good process.
“They are always very dangerous but I don’t have the feeling that Courtois has played a great game.
“We reached that line many times but we were just missing this detail.”
