Absent Kompany not reason for City slip ups – Pellegrini

“A lot of people were disappointed not to be top of the group, but it is not finished”, said Pellegrini, whose side lost 1-0 at Juventus in their previous group fixture.

While he continues to stress that City are the only Premier League club alive in all competitions he can not escape the shadow of Pep Guardiola, who seems destined for Manchester next season.

While key players such as Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero and Vincent Kompany were missing City still boasted an attacking of Raheem Sterling, Wilfried Bony, David Silva and Kevin de Bruyne, a quartet costing close to 150 million pounds ($226.65 million).

Asked if the injury was proving more serious than originally thought, Pellegrini said: “No, but it is an injury that he can not work (on)”. “This is too many games when you keep using the same players but we need an important result”.

Manuel Pellegrini’s men have already booked their ticket for the knockout stages ahead of their final group game, but De Bruyne wants them to give their all versus Gladbach nonetheless as they can still pip Juventus to top spot in Group D.

Fernando may as well have continued his run and taken a seat alongside Pellegrini so poor was his performance – although the same could not be said of Shaqiri who immediately laid on the ideal assist for Arnautovic’s second.

He said: “The concern is that we are playing in all competitions with just 13 players”.

They go into the game though without their skipper, and the stats show that in the 720 Premier League minutes Kompany has played in for City this season they’ve conceded a mere one goal, in comparison to 15 goals conceded in the 630 league minutes without him.

However, Manuel Pellegrini was surely right when he remarked that Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United – all of whom might be eliminated from the Champions League this week – would want his problems.

“I don’t think we have to be always pessimistic about the draw”. Real Madrid vs Malmo is on ESPN Deportes at 2:30pm with Real Madrid already through as the top team in Group A and Malmo ten points behind in 4th-place. This year the league is weird – every team can lose.

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. They’ve recovered a lot of positions in the Bundesliga.

If they are to stand any chance of this, the Sky Blues will need to improve dramatically on their miserable showing away at Stoke City on Saturday, when they fell to an unexpected 2-0 defeat.

“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.