Pep Guardiola went in at half-time thinking he knew what would be on Thursday's back pages as Manchester City's European campaign threatened to go up in flames hours after a fire broke out at the Etihad.

A merchandise kiosk was ablaze outside the Colin Bell Stand minutes before City's three new signings were about to go on stage for a fan event, with supporters evacuated while firefighters arrived at the scene and sorted it. The match was able to start on time, but City were left with their own problem as they trailed at the break in a game they had to win to go through.

Guardiola refused to entertain questions on City going out before the game, and laughed when he was asked if he was still confident of going through ahead of the second half. "When I saw the fire before the game, I thought at half-time journalists had their headline already!" he said.

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"We were out, when you play with nothing to lose we go through and go forward. I think the first half we missed the spark. Savinho helped us like all season when he played there. He changed the game because after five or 10 minutes he created two or three corners and our crowd reacted and we had the chances.

"For the way they played, Brugge had more chances in the second half than the first but in the first half they were so tight we needed the spark and one player to make the individual action and we missed it.

"Maybe we felt the pressure. Sometimes you are scared to win what you are winning and when you are 1-0 down you are out of the Champions League and in the right moment we found the goals.

"It has been a really tough new format, really hard because the game against Inter we played really good and then with Feyenoord 15 minutes left it is not easy to go to Juventus or Paris to win in the circumstances we had.

"We did it. We are there. In two weeks we will be better because new signings have signed. We are going to play against one of these two giants and we will see what happens."