Inside the Manchester City dressing room at half-time against Leyton Orient in FA Cup comeback | OneFootball

Rico Lewis has offered dressing room insight from the half-time interval of Manchester City’s FA Cup clash at Leyton Orient, as Pep Guardiola’s players trailed by one goal.

The Premier League champions continued their pursuit of domestic silverware success this season amid their ongoing struggles in the Premier League and European competition at the weekend.

Having been handed a somewhat favourable draw with a trip to the League One outfit, the lingering feeling was that Orient could spring a surprise in search of one of the all-time great FA Cup giantkillings.

And upon the half-time interval, that was exactly the case as Jamie Donley’s effort from distance forcing an own goal from Stefan Ortega Moreno had Manchester City fearing the very worst.

Ultimately however, goals from Abdukodir Khusanov and Kevin De Bruyne would ensure a victory for the visitors and avoid the ultimate embarrassment in England’s most prestigious knockout cup competition.

Speaking to broadcasters after the 1-2 comeback win at Brisbane Road, star defender Rico Lewis was quizzed on the message issued by Pep Guardiola at the half-time break with City trailing the League One outfit.

“It’s probably not as crazy as you think, he wasn’t going mad or anything like that! It was more just, ‘We’re going to have chances, we’ve already created loads, we just need to keep on going'”, the full-back revealed.

“In this kind of environment, it’s so easy to let the pressure get to all the players and a few more mistakes come. But we just said to keep our heads, the chances will come, and we’ll put them away.”

But on the moment Leyton Orient took the lead via a staggering effort from 40-yards, Lewis continued by admitting that there was very little surprise from his part over the way in which the game was panning out.

“In my head, personally, I was thinking, ‘Of course!’ A shot from the halfway line after we’ve created so many chances and that has gone in,” Lewis said.

“But sometimes that’s football and credit to Leyton Orient; they made it so difficult for us to play and sometimes they’re playing with six at the back so it’s so hard to break down but at the end we got the result.”

“We all know these games are so difficult to play, especially away. It’s perfect for them, the crowd are right up for it but I think every game we take as a game we just need to win.”

Unfortunately for Manchester City, the joy of a comeback win in the cup was cut short almost immediately as they threw away a lead of their own just days later to lose 2-3 to Real Madrid at the Etihad Stadium in the first-leg of a play-off tie for a last-16 place.