Bernardo Silva challenges Man City to ‘fight harder’ following recent setbacks

Bernardo Silva challenged his team-mates to “fight harder” after Manchester City were only able to draw 2-2 with Crystal Palace.

Rico Lewis salvaged a point in the 68th minute before he was sent off with a controversial second yellow card at Selhurst Park, where the resurgent hosts twice led and could well have claimed victory.

Lewis’ resulting suspension causes another headache for Pep Guardiola, who travelled to south London with an already severely-depleted squad.

“It’s football,”  Silva told Manchester City club media. “We accept the moments, we accept the problems that we have, and the only way to come back from this is work even harder, fight harder, and go game by game.

“So now we go to Juve, the Champions League, we need some points and we are going to fight very hard for that.”

Lewis, who will now miss next Sunday’s Manchester Derby, was dismissed following a tackle on Trevoh Chalobah, but replays later revealed he might have been unjustly punished.

City have just three days to recover before facing Juventus in the Champions League on Wednesday.

Silva added: “We have to do better as a team.

“I don’t want to talk about individuals. Obviously it was bad that (Lewis) got sent off. I didn’t check the tackle yet, I don’t know if it’s a correct one or not, but what I can say is it was a good goal, it gave us a point, which is better than zero, but we have to do better.

“Of course it’s never easy to play with one less player. We still tried to go for it, and we had a few moments where we could have damaged them a little bit more, even with 10 men.

“When we’re all together, when the team is complete, we’re much, much stronger. That’s no excuse, but we have to make an effort to bring back the players as quickly as possible, because with the schedules nowadays, it’s just difficult to cope with.

“We’re just 12, 13 players and some of them are not even 100 per cent fit.”