Salford City manager Karl Robinson has admitted he pleaded with the fourth official to seek permission from Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola to end their FA Cup third round tie exactly on 90 minutes as they were thumped 8-0 at the Etihad Stadium.

The Blues have been out of sorts for much of this season but with League Two neighbours Salford City, owned by Manchester United's Class of '92, arriving this past weekend, City found their top gear. The tie was over as a contest by half-time but Guardiola's men, who featured both youth and experience, showed no signs of letting up.

It was 6-0 with 20 minutes remaining and finally 8-0 in the 81st minute. With the dye cast a long time ago, Robinson admitted on Footy Accumulators' No Tippy Tappy Football podcast that he asked fourth official Edward Duckworth for the match to end as promptly as possible.

READ MORE: Man City youngsters send £63m transfer alternative - but it will never happen

READ MORE: Man City make major transfer breakthrough for third deal of January window

"I think when you go into them games, or any game of football, you self-analyse first," Robinson explained. "So what could we have done more, what didn't we do, and all these things and everything could have changed obviously because the results say that.

"But I believe in who I am and I stick by that, when someone says what would you have done differently, I say: 'Not win in round two.' On Saturday, it was 8-0 right, I looked at the scoreboard and it said 89 minutes.

"I went to the fourth official and I said I promise you I’ll ring the PGMOL on Monday about any trouble you get in, but can you please just blow the whistle. Can you speak to the manager [Guardiola] and just ask him if is he okay with it?

"As soon as the 90 minutes came up the referee blew the whistle. At that particular stage, we didn't want any more injuries and they’d done their job.

"It was two managers being respectful of the situation, and I think that shows a good personality in the referee. When you look back at everything, I think we were prepared.

"We didn’t use any excuses after the game because it’s stupid to do that. But we didn’t train on grass before it, we had to train on a five-a-side pitch at an indoor hall all week.

"So when you talk about shape, we’ve got no video footage of our shape, we didn’t do 11v11 because of the way the weather was, and we had injuries. These were all side stories that we didn’t want to use.

"Sometimes you’ve just got to take your medicine and say they were brilliant. It was a great experience, and it made a bit of money for the football club.

"There’s eyes around the world watching Salford now. Our big aim now is to be the next best team in the Manchester area, behind City and United."

City's reward for beating Salford is a trip to another lower league opponent in League One's Leyton Orient. The Blues will be wary of being on the end of a giant killing though having seen the O's beat Championship side Derby County in the third round.