We can’t say that Pep Guardiola didn’t warn us. “We’ll have to do the same to defend our position,” he said last week when asked about Atletico Madrid’s “dark arts”. “It is part of the game, we have to know exactly how to play the minutes.”

After a relatively (relatively!) controversy-free first leg in Manchester, everything exploded in Madrid as Manchester City took a page or two (or 10) from the Diego Simeone manual to help cling on to their 1-0 aggregate lead, as Atletico scrapped, both figuratively and literally, as if their lives depended on it.

The result was, frankly, chaos.

“What is ‘ugly’? What is ‘playing ugly’? I don’t know what playing ugly is,” Guardiola added last week. “My team were winning at Old Trafford 1-0 or 2-0, Bernardo Silva went to the corner and spent four or five minutes in the corner. This is ugly? No, it’s not ugly. It’s being smart, it’s defending with the ball in the final third to not concede counter-attacks and defending our position. That’s all.”

Last week, Guardiola rallied the City ball boys to help combat Atletico’s timewasting but at the Wanda Metropolitano, it was the City players who took as long as they could at throw-ins and goal kicks, staying down after fouls (often, justifiably so) and basically out-Atletico-ing Atletico.

“They push us a lot, they were excellent in the second half, we forgot to play and we were in big, big trouble,” Guardiola said of how the match unfolded, and so they did what they had to do to survive.

After the match, a reporter asked Simeone if he felt his players had crossed the line with some of their antics. “On which occasion?” the Argentinian replied.

Well…

Felipe vs Foden Part One

Felipe, who had an eventful evening, “left one on” Phil Foden after 12 minutes, crashing into the back of the City forward after winning a header. It was a classic case of “he knew exactly what he was doing” as the Brazilian barged through the back of his man and used his shoulder to make contact with the youngster’s head.

Somehow Felipe was not booked, or worse, and after a spell lying facedown on the turf (surely in genuine pain, rather than an attempt to waste time, which did happen at other times in the game), Foden needed a bandage to continue.