Manchester City v Roma: Giallorossi look to maintain strong Champions League start

Date: 30th September 2014 at 8:00am
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Tuesday night sees Roma visit the home of English Premier League champions Manchester City in their second Champions League fixture of the season.

Both sides come into the game having claimed all three points in their respective domestic leagues at the weekend, with Roma overseeing Hellas Verona 2-0 and Manchester City fighting off a strong Hull City performance to win 4-2.

The Giallorossi will be hoping to perform better than they have in previous visits to England, however, as they have won just once in their last 14 matches on English soil, and, especially Manchester, where they have never won in three attempts.

Roma, many people’s Scudetto favourites for the 2014/15 season have been meeting expectations in the early stages of the season and are yet to lose a match, winning all six competitive games played so far and only conceding twice in the process.

Quite contrarily to Roma, Tuesday’s hosts, Manchester City have been falling below expectations so far this season and already find themselves five points adrift of Premier League leaders Chelsea. The current English champions will have wanted a stronger start both domestically and in their European campaign but have left themselves with some catching up to do on both fronts already.

As well as suffering a disappointing home defeat to Stoke, Manuel Pellegrini’s side have not been achieving results in the bigger games this season. They have already dropped points against both Arsenal and Chelsea, as well as being on the wrong end of a 3-0 Community Shield hammering in the season’s curtain raiser. Their Champions League run also took an early blow as they fell to a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Bayern Munich, thanks to a late strike from their ex-player Jerome Boateng.

While Manchester City have never lost at home to a Serie A side, their record against Italian teams is not the best, having not beaten a side from the Peninsula since overcoming AC Milan in a UEFA Cup tie in 1978/79 when Brian Kidd, now assistant manager, scored on both legs against the Rossoneri.

Manchester City will be looking to win their opening home match in the Champions League for the first time, having failed in their last three attempts.

Roma welcome Daniele De Rossi back into their squad after he served a one match suspension in their opening game against CSKA Moscow while City will be happy to have Pellegrini himself and Pablo Zabaleta also returning from suspension.

Expected Staring XIs

Manchester City: Hart; Zabaleta, Kompany, Mangala, Kolarov; Milner, Fernandinho, Touré, Silva; Agüero, Dzeko.

Roma: De Sanctis; Maicon, Manolas, Yanga-Mbiwa, Cole; Nainggolan, Keita, Pjanic; Gervinho, Totti, Florenzi.

 

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