Pellegrini bemoans injury woes after City loss

The Premier League title hopefuls were without a number of key players including Vincent Kompany, Sergio Aguero and Yaya Toure for the trip to the Britannia Stadium. “We are playing in all the competitions with the same 13 or 14 players and for me seeing the game without doubt they hadn’t recovered from the last two games”.

But Hart, returning to the side after injury himself and captaining in the absence of Kompany, believes they have enough quality to cope without the influential Belgium worldwide.

“When we defend, all the players must be involved in defending”.

“He can change the way we play because everyone tries to link with him and he makes the tempo of the game, and he has the most accurate passing in the last third for our team”.

City were able to name David Silva, Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne in their starting line-up, for the first time since they scored six against Newcastle in early October.

“It’s been a tough day and after a 2-0 loss, it’s probably easy to say [we missed the captain] but we’ll stick together as a squad, work for each other and get through this”.

But for a post, Arnautovic would have had a hat-trick, while Shaqiri should have nabbed a goal of his own when the Austrian turned the tables late on, as City failed to threaten. You can talk about tactics but the guys need to go out there and execute them and that is what we did. “In terms of clear-cut chances we were way ahead of City on the day and we could have easily made it embarrassing if I’m honest, but I’m happy with two goals”.

With Bojan Krkic also influential in the Stoke forward line, Mark Hughes’s team continued to create opportunities but could not find another way past City goalkeeper Joe Hart who was back in the side after injury.

Beaten and bruised, Manchester City entertain a revitalised Borussia Moenchengladbach on Tuesday looking for a restorative victory that could yet yield a first-place finish in Champions League Group D. Marko Arnautovic put the Potters in the lead after just seven minutes, and he added the second on 15 minutes. Of course, past year they claimed he was a dead man walking he really was not and ended up signing a contract extension at the start of the 2015-16 campaign.

“We need to keep working hard”.