Manchester City have seldom had their strongest team out this season, being considerably hampered by injuries to key players such as Sergio Agüero, David Silva and Vincent Kompany, yet when Manuel Pellegrini looks around as December approaches he has much to be happy about, even after Saturday’s 4-1 humbling at home to Liverpool.
Pellegrini’s side must, though, show real strength of character if they are to bounce back immediately, and he will be demanding his players give a response by winning at Juventus on Wednesday, which would guarantee top spot in their Champions League group.
“We are the only English team to have qualified already for the Champions League knockout stages, we are still in the Capital One Cup and we have been top of the Premier League most of the time,” the City manager says. “I have to be pleased with that. I think this season we have shown we have a strong squad, we do not depend on just one or two players but it is always better to have a player like Agüero [who returned on Saturday after more than a month out] available rather than injured.”
Though already certain of Champions League football in the New Year, City could make life slightly easier for themselves by finishing top of their group for a change, and they could do that with a game to spare if they can manage a win at Juventus. Last season’s beaten finalists were surprise victors at the Etihad in the opening game of the present campaign and Pellegrini remembers all too clearly how that went down with his critics.
“To be in our present situation must be some sort of miracle,” he joked. “Because when we lost our first game all the papers said we were out of Europe.” In fact City have not dropped a Champions League point since, despite a hamstring injury depriving them of their most reliable scorer, and, if they can keep the run going in Turin, they would be uncatchable on 12 points with the final game against Borussia Mönchengladbach rendered meaningless. Lose to Juventus, on the other hand, and the Italians would regain the initiative in Group D, leaving City looking at the possibility of another second-place finish and a meeting with stronger opponents in the first knockout round.
“It is important not to relax now because we would still like to finish top of the group,” Pellegrini says. “That is not the most important thing. We have done the most important thing by qualifying for the third year in a row but now we must try to win the group. The big teams must respect all the competitions they are involved in, it would be a mistake for us to take it easy in Europe now in order to concentrate on the Premier League. If we win in Italy then maybe we can take the game against Mönchengladbach a little bit easier but it is best not to look that far ahead. We will pick the right team for Juventus, a team to try and get a result. We have a tough game against Southampton the following Saturday and the recovery period will not be ideal, but when we go to Juventus we will be thinking only about making progress in Europe and not about the Premier League.”
Joe Hart won his 50th England cap in Turin earlier this year before captaining the national side in last week’s 2-0 defeat by Spain in Alicante and, while comparisons with the prodigious career of Juve’s Gianluigi Buffon might be premature, not least after Saturday’s humbling, Pellegrini has few doubts the City goalkeeper could go on to become as dominant a figure as the Italian. “Joe is in the middle of his career, still learning and still improving,” he says.
“Buffon has had a long career and done everything for his club and his country but I think Joe could still be playing at the top many years from now. He works very hard, his attitude is good and he has a lot of personality. It did not surprise me that England made him captain. He could captain City as well one day. He is the best goalkeeper in England and I don’t think that is going to change any time soon. I don’t know about winning a World Cup but Joe could go on to have a similar sort of career to Buffon.”
