And speaking ahead of Sunday’s trip to Aston Villa, Pellegrini confirmed Silva remained short of fitness and is targeting the home match against Liverpool on November 21.
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While City were annoyed that Belgium called up Vincent Kompany for the October internationals after he had missed club fixtures, there was no repeat and Pellegrini said club and country had not needed to be in contact about the 29-year-old.
“David is working. He’s not 100 per cent fit”. He tried to play a small side game last week but he couldn’t.
“I hope he will not receive that because he played a lot of years for Aston Villa”, said the City boss.
‘The Spanish national team know David can not play and so there is no problem. “The medical staff of the national team of Spain, they have had communication from us”.
“We hope they can recover after this global break and that we don’t have any more injuries because we have a busy period after the worldwide break and we need the whole squad”.
“We are not making real rotation, maybe we are changing one player because we don’t have any others to change. I hope now we can do rotation because we have a lot of hard games”.
Delph, who was the club captain at Villa Park, left for City in an £8m deal during the summer, having indicated initially that he would stay.
Boisterous: Will the Holte End target Delph?
Pellegrini said: “Maybe it’s the same as when we played against Sevilla with Jesus Navas”. “Fabian played all his career in Aston Villa but now he’s a professional player here with us”. I know that he wants to play because he had so many injuries.
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Despite the difference in league position between the two teams, with City now top of the pile and the Villans languishing at the bottom, Pellegrini is anticipating a reaction from the claret and blues following the arrival of new manager Remi Garde. “He played a lot of years for Aston Villa. He was very important because he was a young player here but he had so many injuries in the season he was with me”. “I don’t think the fans will forget those things”. “We can do it if we concentrate, if we play with intensity and especially if we understand that it will be a tough game”. They are at the bottom of the table with a new manager so the motivation to try not to be relegated will be high.
