Claudio Ranieri sets new Leicester points total

Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini has slapped a 1am New Year’s Eve curfew on his title-chasing squad.

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini is optimistic about his side’s chances of winning the Premier League title this season.

City are doing “all we know” to get to the bottom of Kompany’s calf problems, according to Pellegrini, whose side are three points behind Premier League leaders Arsenal heading into the Saturday Night Football game at Watford. It is, in Pellegrini’s words, “a good position” going into the second half of the season, but it represents a significantly lower points total than they had accrued at the same stage in previous years. “I hope this is that part of the season for Kompany and the second part he will be fit”.

Title rivals Manchester City and Arsenal face Champions League ties with Dynamo Kiev and Barcelona respectively when that competition resumes in February while City are also in the League Cup semi final against Stoke. Everyone must demonstrate their performance in every game and more important than just one name is to have a performance as a team, which I think we had against Leicester in the last game.

Leicester City finished a memorable 2015 with a home draw against Manchester City.

“We hope that this must be just a moment of his career. I think the big teams have to stay at a high level, but sometimes it means nobody wants to win the league – it’s very odd this league”, Ranieri told BT Sport after the City game.

Fabian Delph and Fernando remain slight doubts for selection at the weekend while Gael Clichy could be back next week, Vincent Kompany remains out of action with a calf muscle strain and Samir Nasri is on track for an April recovery.

Asked if his players faced an early curfew, Pellegrini said: “No, not before midnight”. The most important thing is to feel, at the end of the season, that we have given absolutely everything to be successful. “I think we also played very well against Leicester. Maybe we have to finish a little bit more but I think we are in the correct way”.

‘We didn’t win against Arsenal but I don’t think we played a bad game.

“We were calm, tried to do our job”.