Stoke go ninth while City look set to be knocked off the top by the end of the day.
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“We must make a balance of the whole season”, the Chilean added as he prepared his side to face Borussia Monchengladbach in the Champions League on Tuesday.
“It is an injury that means he can not work”, Pellegrini said on Monday. It is not a serious injury, it is painful.
Yet in 23 games that City have played across all competitions, they kept clean sheets only when Kompany was in the line-up.
He said: “It will be the fifth game we play in 14 days, and for the last two we had less than 72 hours to recover”.
Pellegrini said: “I think we must try to continue winning the most amount of games by playing well”.
Manuel Pellegrini’s Sky Blues have an academic fixture against Andre Schubert’s plucky Borussia Monchengladbach, and with the German team having not quite sealed their Europa League spot, the game could be of more interest and importance to the visitors.
Pellegrini said: “We are going to find a very hard team and we need to play very well if we want to win, not only because they beat Bayern Munich in their last game but because in the last two months they have been playing well and have good players”. It was a hugely disappointing performance all round which emphasised the absence of several key players, while the defence was so often left for dead by the silky, astute football from their opponents, who played them off the park in such eyecatching fashion.
Still with the hope of finishing top of the pile, Manchester City round off their Champions League group campaign with a home clash against Borussia Monchengladbach.
“We’ve got a great squad and Vinny is a massive part of it but Nico (Otamendi), Martin (Demichelis) and Manga (Eliaquim Mangala – suspended for the Stoke game) are good centre-halves”, he told CityTV.
Juventus – two points clear of City and with a better head-to-head record – play Sevilla away in their final group game.
Austria forward Arnautovic scored in the seventh and 15th minutes from assists by Xherdan Shaqiri as Stoke exploited poor defending by City, which was without Sergio Aguero, Yaya Toure and Vincent Kompany because of injury. “We have the knowledge that we have just taken on and beaten the best team in the world”.
“We need to play now on Tuesday”. Many have started comparing him to Tevez, but Juventus teammate Leonardo Bonucci warned against heaping too much expectation on the youngster’s shoulders.
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“I think, in this case, the fourth [striker] should be Kelechi”.
