We Have To Raise Our Game

Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola has warned his players they will have to step it up a notch if they expect to achieve a positive result in Germany against Stuttgart on Tuesday night.

Barca travel to the Mercedes-Benz Arena for the first leg of their Champions League round-of-16 clash on the back of a comprehensive 4-0 over Racing, however Guardiola claims a repeat performance wouldn’t be enough to get the job done against Die Roten.

“We have to take another step forward if we want to be champions,” he told fcbarcelona.com. “Scoring four goals against Racing has merit but it’s not enough to compete with German football.

“We know this standard won’t be enough to put us through to the quarter-finals. We have to recover our good form."

Guardiola went on to say his team would look to attack and stressed the importance of returning to Camp Nou with an away goal.

“We have to score goals, we have to attack well, not run with the ball and pass it about. Under [coach Christian] Gross, Stuttgart have great stats when it comes to goals and results. They’ve got a lot of interesting things.”