Manchester City Will Be Without Hart

“Big teams, they control the midfield, and we were playing two against four, two against five sometimes and it just… we always struggled to handle it like anybody would”.

Saints have won just two of their last 13 Premier League away games (W2 D5 L6), but are unbeaten on the road this season (W2 D4). The Argentine is without much game experience recently so will surely be tested in City’s next match against Southampton.

Fernandinho, Yaya Toure and Sergio Aguero all missed good chances for City while Fernando had a header touched onto the post by Gianluigi Buffon.

“After that, of course if you don’t have Champions League maybe it can be easy, maybe they must play the Europa League”.

Allegri claimed Group D was “very difficult” to qualify from and suggested it was the most challenging section in the tournament.

City host Borussia Monchengladbach on matchday six, with Juve travelling to Spain to take on Sevilla, and Pellegrini insists that his already-qualified side can still top the group. “It’s a rumour I’ve had for the last two-and-a-half seasons here, so there’s no problem about that”.

“We will see. We don’t have many days until Saturday, but when we arrive in Manchester we will have a look”.

Both Fernadinho and substitute Raheem Sterling were guilty of wasting superb chances at Juventus Stadium and with City now likely to finish second in the group, Quinn believes Manuel Pellegrini’s side could pay the price for those missed opportunities when the draw for the last 16 comes around. I trust a lot in Willy Caballero. We don’t know if they will be the top team coming out of Group D or in second – all Juve needs is a draw against Sevilla to wrap up first place – but we know they’re still in the dance. “We need to see what the doctor says tomorrow”.

City are now winless in three games since a dazzling victory at Sevilla clinched their place in the knockout stages but, as he continues to operate without injured key men such as Vincent Kompany, Pellegrini praised his team for a marked improvement on their 4-1 weekend thrashing against Liverpool.

There has still been no definitive update on Silva’s ankle injury having been reportedly close to a return for a number of weeks.

He said: “Mr Pellegrini is right”. We were thinking that in every match and we still think about that now going forward.

“We have a fantastic squad and I think we were unlucky to be honest”, the Ivorian midfielder said.