DON’T SHOW ME UP
Pellegrini needs win to justify Cup farce
So, three days after Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini sacrificed the FA Cup, here is his chance to show sending out a weakened team against Chelsea was worth it.
The Chilean did not want to discuss the issue yesterday and it was hard to blame him.
But his controversial selection policy on Sunday will only have paid off if things work out for him tonight in Ukraine and then on Sunday at Wembley.
This, after all, is what the Chelsea match was all about. Pellegrini wants to mark his final season at City by breaking new ground in the Champions League and by winning another trophy.
A good result at the olympic Stadium tonight and then victory over Liverpool in the Capital one Cup final will, in his eyes, close the argument about his team’s efforts in the FA Cup.
‘I don’t think one game is linked with the other one,’ said Pellegrini ( right), unconvincingly.
‘Unfortunately for us, we had to make a difficult decision against Chelsea, but it was the only clear decision we could make in this moment.
‘If we had a completely fit squad, then a lot more experienced players could have played that game, but that was not the case.
‘We had just 13 players, so even though it is our intention to continue in all of the competitions, we couldn’t do that. We had to take a chance, but this is absolutely different here.
‘We are now thinking of trying to improve, because in the last two years we have arrived in the last 16 for the first time. Now we have won the group and we will try to continue further in the Champions League, knowing that we have a difficult game here.’
At training last night in Kiev — in the same stadium where England lost to Italy at Euro 2012 — there was a much more familiar look about City. In place of the batch of development squad teenagers who turned out against Chelsea, the likes of Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Yaya Toure were preparing to face Kiev.
Having lost to Barcelona at this stage in the last two seasons, City have much more going for them this time. Sergei Rebrov’s Dynamo Kiev finished second to Chelsea in their group but play tonight having just emerged from a mid- season break that has seen them play only friendlies since December 9.
‘They’ve had a long break and the chance to have a good rest,’ said City defender Pablo Zabaleta. ‘We’ve played a lot of games in January and February but tomorrow we will see players who have had a rest last weekend. Physically and mentally we must be fresh for this and play at 100 per cent.
‘We know we’ve been playing against the best teams in Europe. In the last four years we’ve been learning a lot about the way you must play in these games.
‘We’ve played the best team in the world at this stage for the last two years, even though I’m not going to say that this game is going to be easy.
‘Kiev have the mentality to play in these types of games because they’ve played in this competition many times before. The only way to do this is to perform well on Wednesday and then finish it at the Etihad.’ Certainly City must show some improvement on their poor recent form if they are to inject momentum into their season over the next few days. Sunday’s 5-1 defeat was City’s third on the bounce in all competitions and their record in the Barclays Premier League is not a whole lot better than that of their much-maligned neighbours United in recent months.
With cap- tain Vincent Kompany back after injury, the defensive side of City’s game should improve. At the other end, Pellegrini will hope for more from top scorer Aguero and creator-in- chief Silva than he has witnessed of late.
Tonight, Kiev’s grand stadium will be full after UEFA reduced a ban on supporters from two matches to one, despite a number of raciallymotivated incidents at matches. A mixed message from UEFA, then, but Pellegrini was sanguine when asked about the issue.
‘Well, you know my opinion about this,’ he said. ‘one of the worst things you can do is play in an empty stadium without fans.
‘In this case, fans of Kiev have been given a lesson about what happened.
‘For me, I know maybe for the home team it’s a disadvantage to play without fans, but for football it’s important to have fans.
‘I hope in this case it will be a lesson for these fans and tomorrow we have a normal game.’