Pep counts five finals to restore City pride and prestige
Manchester City's Josko Gvardiol celebrates scoring their side's second goal of the game during the Emirates FA Cup Semi Final match at Wembley Stadium, London. Picture date: Sunday April 27, 2025.
Pep Guardiola says his Manchester City players now face five 'finals' to salvage some pride, prestige and a trophy from a troubled season.
One will be in the FA Cup where City will meet Crystal Palace in a Wembley showdown on May 17 while the other four are in the Premier League where City face an intriguing battle to finish in the top five to clinch qualification for the lucrative Champions League.
Guardiola hopes Sunday's semi-final win over Nottingham forest will provide the perfect platform to end a campaign that he readily admits has been below-par - by City's high standards - on a high.
And while he would love to add a third FA Cup triumph to his lengthy list of honours he made no bones that Champions League qualification, with the all the riches it brings, is far more important.
"The Champions League is the most important thing - that would limit the damage because this season has not been good," he said after their 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest that put City in the final for the third season running."
City failed to sell out their ticket allocation with supporters blaming the costs of the trip to Wembley but Guardiola had no bones to pick with them. After all it was their 21st Wembley visit in all competitions since he took over so you can perhaps understand that the novelty may have worn off.
"I want to say thank you to our fans," he added. "I know how difficult it is to come here with work tomorrow, the [cost of] tickets and the travel. I can't thank them enough and hopefully they will join us and see us in the final."
City will be favourites on May 17 but Guardiola was quick to point to Palace's impressive win over Aston Villa in Saturday's other semi-final and the fact Oliver Glasner's improving team were 2-0 up at the Etihad in a recent League game before losing 5-2.
"Just take a look at what they did against Villa," he added. "We played them a few weeks ago and were 2-0 up and it could have been 3-0. The pace they have up front and they have an extraordinary manager. They have so much physicality and experience. Hopefully it will be better than last season when we lost in the final against Manchester United."
City appeared to be cruising to a comfortable victory after early goals in each half from Rico Lewis and Josko Gvardiol gave them a 2-0 lead.
But Forest refused to throw the towel in and struck the woodwork three times in the later stages of the second half - two of the efforts coming from Morgan Gibbs-White and the other from sub Taiwo Akinwonyi.
The introduction of Anthony Elanga at half-time helped sparked Forest's improvement after City had totally dominated the first period and left fans wondering why he had been left out of the starting line-up.
Manager Nuno Espirito Sanchez came close to admitting his selection was a mistake. "I regret so many things in my life, but that is not the point. It is about having a squad to manage the situations that we have to attend to and the absences.
"Anthony came really well and strong to the game and created difficulties. When we look back and analyse, we have a lot to fight for. After the sadness goes away we'll be stronger. We have to physically recover because it was very intense. This night will be hard on the mind but tomorrow is a new day to prepare and fight.
“We had good situations. City started really well, they caused a lot of problems and scoring with the first chance changes everything. The reaction was good, it was fine margins. We performed well and competed against a very good team that has talented players. They made it really hard to revert the result. The effort was there. The fans stayed with us until the end of the game. We gave it our all.” It was Forest's first appearance in the last four of the competition since 1991 when a 19-year-old Roy Keane scored their first goal in 4-0 win over West Ham at Villa Park.
And they will have to pick themselves up quickly because they face Brentford at the City Ground on Thursday in a game which is vital to their own hopes of qualifying for the Champions League which would be a remarkable change in fortunes after surviving relegation battles in the last two seasons.
By sharp contrast it was City's seventh successive appearance in the last four of the competition - and eighth in the nine seasons since Guardiola arrived in 2016 - and that greater experience of the big occasions undoubtedly helped them over the line as Forest came to belated life.
Gibbs-White was being hard on himself when he apologised to Forest fans afterwards for the two efforts that struck the woodwork. He couldn't have hit the volley that struck the bar more sweetly while he was desperately unlucky when he intercepted Gvardiol's back pass and rounded Stefan Ortega only to hit the far post from a very tight angle.
Fine margins indeed .... but overall City were the better team and deserved their win.
 Sels 6; Abbott 5 (Sosa 83, 5) Milenkovic 5, Murillo 6; Dominguez 4 (J Silva 82, 5), Danilo 4 (Elanga 46, 7), Anderson 5 (Sangare 71, 5), Toffolo 5; Gibbs-White 7, Wood 5 (Akinwonyi 71, 5) Hudson-Odoi 6.
Ortega 6; Nunes 7, Dias 7, Gvardiol 8, O'Reilly 7; Kovacic 9 (Gonzalez 88, 5) Lewis 8; Silva 7, Grealish 7 (Gundogan 71, 6), Savinho 7 (Foden 81, 5); Marmoush 8 (Doku 81, 6).
Referee: Michael Oliver 8.
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