Pep Guardiola has urged Manchester City to learn the lessons of their red card woes against Barcelona when LaLiga's champions make their latest visit to the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday.

City trail Barca by five points in Champions League Group C after going down to a 4-0 defeat at Camp Nou two weeks ago, where an initially encouraging display unravelled rapidly after goalkeeper Claudio Bravo was sent off for deliberate handball.

It was the fourth time in five defeats to Barcelona over the past four seasons that City have ended with reduced numbers against the Catalan giants, with Bravo's moment of madness versus his former employers seeing him gain unwanted membership to a dubious club alongside Martin Demichelis, Pablo Zabaleta and Gael Clichy.

Willy Caballero will seek to repel Barcelona's formidable forward line in Bravo's absence after Lionel Messi completed a hat-trick at the expense of his fellow Argentinian in the previous encounter.

"When I am talking about how you have to learn it is these type of things. It is always difficult to win the Champions League games," said Guardiola, whose City team won for the first time in seven matches at West Brom on Saturday.

"It is always difficult to win against Barcelona, 11 v 11. Ten against 11 is almost impossible. Manuel [Pellegrini, the former City manager] lived that.

"Of course we have to improve. Sometimes it is unfair but the last time was our mistake so we have to improve on that.

"It's football and football is a game of mistakes. Sometimes you have to live some situations like that to improve."