The problem now is that City and Madrid's strikers are also sometimes difficult to guess because their performance is still not very consistent. Perhaps in terms of productivity, Madrid are still quite more confident because for now they do not only rely on Mbappe, unlike City, who until now preferred to force Haaland again and again.
In addition, I quite agree for City's defense which is indeed bad at the moment because it cannot be denied that for now there are still a lot of mistakes that are always made by City defenders who sometimes rely on each other or make individual mistakes, it's just that Madrid also has the same problem but the difference is that Madrid has a gap in defense because they have a lot of injured players for now.
But even so, I still expect that in the match later Madrid can qualify for the next phase by beating Manchester City in this play off.
If Ancelotti can get a good defender like Rudiger to hold Haaland in the match, Manchester City will not have an easy time beating Real Madrid, because Haaland is the player who helps Manchester City win matches, but now that Rudiger is injured, I'm not sure if he'll be back before the UCL playoffs. Everyone is only waiting for the date to arrive so they can watch the match, which will be one of the most difficult in the playoff stages. Most people believe Real Madrid will defeat Manchester City because of their recent performance, but this is the UCL, and Manchester City will do everything they can to get to the next round. And Madrid are the king of ucl, they know how to play the competition very well and that is why they have more trophies then every club in the Europe. And since Zinedine won the Champions league back to back for madrid they have not get any coach that do that again for madrid, let see if Ancelotti can break the record and win the title ths season again.
He will be sidelined for at least 5 matches including against Atletico Madrid and Mancehster City so Ancelotti will still have to rack his brains to keep the situation in defense still running well.
At the moment they are very short on defenders although there are still some young players at their disposal including those brought in from Castilla but the problem is whether these young players are mentally capable enough to face big intense matches like this.
Madrid have always had injury problems but unfortunately sometimes Ancelotti moves too slowly to find optional players under the pretext of trusting the players. Although I like the fact that he trusts the players, in some moments this can also cause more serious problems in terms of performance.
The match is now in sight and it depends on how they do this match because now the mentality, fighting spirit and cohesiveness of the club will be important to support their condition in carrying out the scheme in a match.