After City’s disastrous showing at Stoke, it will definitely be important to come out guns blazing against Borussia Monchengladbach, a team that just defeated Bayern Munich 3-1 over the weekend.
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“Sergio has an injury which means he can not work normally, so he needs time to recover”, he said.
Despite the figures, Pellegrini believes City are capable of defending well without Kompany as they did it towards the end of last season, telling a reporter at the pre match press conference: “No, I don’t agree with your conclusions”.
Despite twice being drawn against Barcelona after runners-up finishes, Pellegrini has played down the significance of finishing first in the group.
“The amount of games is not an excuse because we have everything around us to make our life easy”.
Aguero has missed his side’s last two games with a heel problem while Kompany has not played since November with a calf injury and the pair are doubtful for the upcoming festive period, which includes a trip to fellow Premier League title contenders Arsenal.
It was City’s third loss in its last five games in all competitions – and fourth of its league campaign – to fuel concerns about the team’s shortcomings when its star players are missing.
City welcome back Yaya Toure after a muscle problem but continue to be hampered by injuries.
“We knew it was there and it was going to take him some time to adjust to the Premier League but that was a really eye-opening performance and one that we knew he was capable of”.
That was always Alex Ferguson’s attitude to the Champions League groups; there was no point second-guessing who you might get in the knockout phase, the important thing was to be there. “This is too many games when you keep using the same players but we need an important result”.
He said City, who have a much worse record when Kompany is injured than when he plays, will not change to a more defensive style to cut down on the number of goals conceded. 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.
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Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart admits the team’s performances have dropped below the minimum required recently but he denies they are suffering from a lack of leadership. Here December and January are two very important months, you have to play a lot of games in midweek and you must start playing again in Europe in January. “We will do everything we can to put on a great display against a great club”.
