Beaten Man City let in four goals in Stuttgart friendly

Manchester City stumbled to a 4-2 loss to VFB Stuttgart in their final pre-season game on Saturday evening.

The Bundesliga club took full advantage of a shambolic defensive display by the visitors in the first half.

Serbia forward Kostic opened the scoring at the Mercedes-Benz Arena after outpacing Sagna when City failed to deal with a long ball.

There was an improvement from the English outfit in the second period, however, with Sterling setting up Nigerian teenager Kelechi Iheanacho to get a goal back six minutes from time.

The Roma target, who has barely been used in City’s pre-season games, came on for the last 15 minutes and scored what may prove his final goal for the club.

Pellegrini’s men will now turn their attention to their opening Premier League clash against West Bromwich Albion on Monday, 10 August.

With 40,122 fans watching on, Stuttgart punished a City side missing Sergio Aguero, Martin Demichelis, Pablo Zabaleta, Fernandinho, Yaya Toure and Fernando for some poor defending – with three of their goals coming in one seven-minute spell.

It was feared that the 32-year-old Ivory Coast global midfielder would miss the start of the new campaign when he suffered a knock to the head in a collision with Real Madrid goalkeeper Keylor Navas in the 4-1 defeat at the MCG on the tour of Australia.

Manuel Pellegrini decided include the likes of Joe Hart, Vincent Kompany, Raheem Sterling, Wilfried Bony, Samir Nasri and David Silva in his starting line-up.