Manuel Pellegrini is hopeful David Silva will be fit to return, while Richard Wright will be on the bench – he hasn’t played Premier League football since 2006.
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After taking just a point from two Premier League games, Manchester City returned to winning ways with a 3-1 victory over Southampton at home on Saturday, November 27.
Kevin De Bruyne and Fabian Delph put City 2-0 up by halftime but Saints came back into the game with Shane Long heading home and Dusan Tadic going close, however Aleksandar Kolarov made it 3-1.
He said: “I think that we finished with the game – that very bad game that we played on Saturday – on Sunday morning”.
“I’m more direct than him, he can keep the ball a little bit more than me so to have the two together is an advantage”.
A first-half strike from Mario Mandzukic saw last season’s beaten finalists Juventus into the last 16 of the Champions League with a 1-0 win over injury-hit Manchester City.
City responded to losses to Liverpool and Juventus with a scintillating start to the contest as Kevin De Bruyne opened the scoring in the ninth minute.
De Bruyne said: “Obviously it’s good for us that David is back and I think it’s also good for his confidence that he’s coming back.
The first goal, and some other chances for City in the first 20 minutes, we did it by ourselves and that was very disappointing”.
“Fortunately it’s not a very serious injury for Joe but it’s important for him to recover well – we’ll see in the coming days how bad it is”, Pellegrini revealed.
Injuries have played such a crucial part in City’s campaign.
However, the win over Southampton, who had not lost away from home in the league since the final day of last season, gave Pellegrini the impetus to silence the critics, after Bayern Munich manager Pep Guardiola was once again linked with his job. “But we can certainly cope, if we couldn’t I would be doing something wrong, because we’re only talking about one player in the squad”. Both team have decent quality and both teams will want a good result considering the poor results coming into this match.
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“Juve have been lucky to be honest with you, as we had the chances to draw and even win the game”, Toure told BT Sport after the game.
