• Manager says midfielder asked to leave City two seasons before
• Pochettino confirms Enzo Fernández is playing with a hernia

Pep Guardiola has described Cole Palmer as the “decisive player of the season” and said Manchester City must find a way of negating him in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea. Guardiola also revealed that Palmer asked to leave City for two seasons before making his £42m move to west London in September .

Palmer joined City at under-eight level and made 19 appearances for the club across three years before leaving for Chelsea, and having scored for City in their Community Shield defeat to Arsenal in August, as well as in their European Super Cup victory over Sevilla that followed 10 days later. He will line up against last season’s treble winners as the Premier League joint-top scorer with 20 goals, alongside Erling Haaland, who is a doubt for the semi-final.

Treble winners turn their focus to becoming the first English men’s club to claim a double-double in FA Cup semi-final at Wembley

Chelsea beware: at 5.15pm on Saturday Pep Guardiola expects Manchester City to show precisely how little sorrow they feel for themselves after being dumped out of the Champions League by Real Madrid .

The FA Cup semi-final comes 72 hours after Wednesday’s penalty shootout heartbreak and, maybe, too soon for Mauricio Pochettino’s team as a smarting City aim to forget their lost double-treble and take another step in their bid to become the first English men’s club to claim a double-double.

With 72 minutes on the clock, an increasingly fervent Manchester City support announced who they were and promised to fight until the end. Their team was trailing to Rodrygo’s early goal and it was a time for them to show their champion courage, for a hero to emerge; for them to go all the way to the very last.

All of the above did happen. On a night of the finest margins and the highest tension, Kevin De Bruyne popped up with the equaliser in the 76th minute. The City playmaker always seems to score against Real Madrid and his goal here following a surge and cross from the substitute, Jérémy Doku, and a fluffed clearance by Antonio Rüdiger.

• Champions League updates from Etihad, kick-off 8pm BST
• Bayern Munich v Arsenal – follow it live
• Get in touch with Barry | Live scoreboard: Wednesday’s latest

Daniele Orsato leads tonight’s team of match officials and will take charge of his third match between these sides since 2020.

Referee: Daniele Orsato

Referee’s assistants: Ciro Carbone and Alessandro Giallatini

Fourth official: Maurizio Mariani

VAR: Massimiliano Irrati

• England midfielder moved to Spain from Dortmund last summer
• Bellingham faces Manchester City in Champions League

Jude Bellingham has said joining Real Madrid was a “no-brainer” despite interest from many other elite clubs including Manchester City, who they face in Wednesday’s Champions League quarter-final second leg.

The midfielder signed for Real last summer from Borussia Dortmund in a deal worth up to £115m after discussions with a host of clubs. Bellingham was asked how close he came to joining the treble winners.

• Midfielder says desire to ‘create a legacy’ is inspiring players
• Kyle Walker winning battle to be fit for Real Madrid second leg

Bernardo Silva believes Manchester City’s bid to claim a historic second consecutive treble and become arguably the greatest club team of all-time is “an inspiration” with the team a possible 12 matches from achieving the feat.

City face Real Madrid in Wednesday’s Champions League quarter-final second leg with the tie poised at 3-3 after last week’s opening match at the Bernabéu. City lead the Premier League by two points from Arsenal and Liverpool with six games left of the campaign. On Saturday they play Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.

City have not been at their overwhelming best this season, but they remain immune to the typical anxieties of a title run-in

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There are still only two points in it: Manchester City 73, Arsenal 71, Liverpool 71. It’s not over yet. If the three keep pace for the next five games, it will still be the first season since 1971-72 in which three different sides go into their final game of the season with a chance of winning the title. The hope for anybody seeking a dramatic run-in is that this weekend was just the beginning of a final month of twists and turns. But the sense is that the race has taken a decisive shift towards City and a fourth successive title for Pep Guardiola’s team.

It’s not just that City swept Luton aside 5-1 . You’d expect that; they beat them 6-2 in the FA Cup in February. Nor was it just the fact that Liverpool lost at home to Crystal Palace , the opponent Jürgen Klopp had beaten more than any other, or that Arsenal lost at home to Aston Villa , managed by their former manager Unai Emery, each detail twisting the knife in a little further. It was the way they lost, coming after the way Arsenal had played in drawing against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and the way Liverpool had played in losing to Atalanta in the Europa League .

Manchester City are only two points ahead, there are six games remaining, but we know we have seen this movie before

At the final whistle the Emirates ­Stadium was already half empty, the home crowd streaming out into the Sunday gloom.

Mikel Arteta could be seen striding across the turf to applaud the empty pink-red seats, or least those who had remained in theirs right to the end of an afternoon that had kicked off to raucous club anthems, tongues of fire on the touchline, choreographed victory-vibes.

This season’s title race is thrilling because all the contenders are imperfect. Sport is nothing without a sense of jeopardy

In Chad Harbach’s 2011 novel The Art of Fielding , the shortstop Henry Skrimshander is approaching the US college record for the most consecutive errorless baseball games when a throw inexplicably goes awry and hits a teammate in the dugout. At that, his confidence evaporates to the point that he can no longer execute the most basic skills; he gets the yips. What lingers from the novel, for me, is the crushing sense of pressure of having errors recorded like that, appearing even on the scoreboard, as though the sport had become less about the achievement of glory than about the avoidance of mistakes.

Avoiding mistakes is good. Some people should be judged on the avoidance of mistakes. Postal workers, bus drivers, indexers, especially surgeons and air-traffic controllers, should carry on not getting things wrong. But sport? Shouldn’t sport be about actively creating something?