Manchester City’s Samir Nasri has said that the club’s players face being sold this summer if they are eliminated from the Champions League by Bayern Munich tonight.

City will be out of the competition if they continue their dismal group stage by failing to beat the Germans and there is also a winner from the game between AS Roma and CSKA Moscow. Nasri said that the club’s two Premier League trophies in the past three years did not entitle City to consider themselves a “top club” and that the players were too highly paid to let the Abu Dhabi owners down once again.

“Let’s be honest, we need to do something or otherwise next year it is going to be new players, it’s going to be [new] everything,” said Nasri, who has the relative security of a new five-year contract, signed last summer. “That’s how we work when you play for a big team, a big club. You have to respond and show everyone you deserve to qualify.

“In the last three years I have been here, we have won the league twice and been runners-up, but now we have to improve in the Champions League if we want to be a top club. It’s not enough to be top in your league if you don’t do anything in the Champions League. With the players we have, the owner gives us his trust and we have to return it in the Champions League.”

Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Show all 11 1 /11 Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Joe Hart A slight slip may have cost him when Totti scored, but was solid throughout, making a couple of good saves in the second-half. 6 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Pablo Zabaleta Arguably the best right-back in world football, but might have spotted Totti’s run for the goal a fraction earlier. Involved in an entertaining back and forth battle with Gervinho. 6 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Vincent Kompany Completely lost Totti for the goal, getting caught in no man’s land between Nainggolan and the striker. 5 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Martin Demichelis Erratic in the first-half as Roma dominated but settled down in a much more comfortable second period. 6 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Gael Clichy Offered little going forward and struggled to contain Roma’s fluid front three and the marauding Maicon. 5 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Jesus Navas A defensive liability well marshalled by Ashley Cole in the first-half; substituted by Pellegrini at half-time for James Milner. 4 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Yaya Toure Outperformed by the men in black, and Keita in particular, Toure again struggled to impose himself in football’s biggest competition. 5 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Fernandinho One of City’s better performers, the Brazilian worked tirelessly to battle an impressive Roman midfield. 7 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings David Silva Did his best to pull the strings for City but failed to deliver the decisive pass – should have scored in the dying minutes but turned his shot wide. 6 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Sergio Aguero A bundle of energy up front, Aguero was let down by a lack of service, though he slotted his penalty away confidently. 6 Getty Images Manchester City 1 Roma 1 player ratings Edin Dzeko Failed to hold the ball up when it was fed to him, Dzeko barely had a kick all night before being replaced early in the second-half by Frank Lampard. 4 Getty Images

City have mustered two points and only four goals from their four games, with players such as Yaya Touré, Fernando and Gaël Clichy a profound disappointment and captain Vincent Kompany also failing to reach the required level. The City players would consider themselves failures if they were eliminated, said 27-year-old Nasri. “Of course [we would]. With the salary of every player and the level of those players, 90 per cent of the team is world class, then not to qualify from the first round of the Champions League would be a huge blow for the club – and for us as well.

“But the thing in Champions League is not just the talent. It’s not being a team. It’s the experience as well. We need to show that we are smart players and to use what happened in the last couple of years to improve. We still have a chance and we need to take it. Now is the moment.”

Nasri defended City’s manager, Manuel Pellegrini, against accusations that he has allowed players to slip into a comfort zone, by being less confrontational than his predecessor Roberto Mancini. “For the moment we [don’t] perform in the Champions League and that is a reality,” he said. “That is nothing to do with a comfort zone. The manager doesn’t give anyone comfort in what happened last year. It’s forgotten.”

The Frenchman said the lesson should be learnt from the season after they won the title under Mancini, when they finished 11 points behind Manchester United and lost in the first stage of the Champions League. “We need to use what happened under Mancini in the second year,” he said of the manager he came to abhor. “We don’t want to repeat the same mistake. We are really lucky that we are two points behind with two games left and have a chance to qualify. We need to take it now because we are not going to have any favours from anyone else any more.”

Mathematically, City are still in the competition if they lose tonight and the group’s other sides draw. But they would need to win by around six goals in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico next month. Pellegrini, without suspended Touré and Fernandinho, admitted this was “our last chance”.

Both Nasri and Martin Demichelis said they believed that Bayern – who have already won the group – would field a weakened team. But Pep Guardiola’s squad is too injury hit to make substantial changes. “I know the German mentality is always the same,” said Demichelis, a Bayern player for seven years until 2010. “I am sure they will come here to win.”