Match Preview. Villareal v Manchester City. Champions League Match 4

Manchester City make the trip to Valencia  this evening for match 4 in their qualifying group. Currently lying third behind Napoli and Bayern Munich this game is realistically a make or break for Mancini’s men.

The opportunity is certainly there for the free scoring blues, as Villareal CF have not got a great deal to play for.  Things might have been different had Sergio Aguero not grabbed his late winner in the 2-1 battle 2 weeks ago.  

Now it seems unlikely that they stand any real chance of 3^rd spot and given the state of their injury room, they’ll be more concerned with getting to the final whistle unscathed.

Villareal will line up tonight missing  Guiseppe Rossi, Cristian Zapata, Cani, Marco Ruben and Marcos Senna. To lessen any psychological blow to their supporters they have listed Javier Camuñas as ‘doubtful’.

With Vincent Kompany facing a domestic one match ban against QPR on Saturday I suspect that Mancini will decide to keep the inform Jolean Lescott away from the action underlining the Premier League  as his main priority for the year.

It might seem odd given his current internal hearing but I wouldn’t be to see surprised to see Kolo Toure in the starting lineup.  Toure had a rough time in his previous cup outing against Wolves but this could be a good chance to build some confidence again.

City have never won a game on Spanish soil, so it’s fair to say that Mancini will go with a line up of players who are used to the Spanish way of doing things.  Pablo Zabaleta, Yaya Toure, Silva and Aguero have all notched league victories against Villareal before.

Why do they play in Yellow?

In 1947 their suppliers sports shop didn’t have any White kits in stock,  all they had left was Yellow.

In the other Group A match Napoli travel to Bayern. A draw would be the most helpful result for City, but a Napoli win would make things very interesting. 

Predicted Team Line Up.

Hart, Zabaleta Kompany K Toure Clichy Milner, Yaya Toure, De Jong Silva Aguero Balotelli

Prediction

Villareal CF 0 City 2