Manuel Pellegrini admits that the next nine days in which they face Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Chelsea will provide the champions with an indicator of how successful their season may be.
Manchester City travel to the Emirates Stadium for today's early kick-off before Wednesday's trip to Munich in the opening Champions League group match, and the hosting of Chelsea on Sunday week.
“It’s a good test because they are three important teams,” Pellegrini said. “We are just beginning the season so not one of these games will decide the future, but it’s very important to start winning and trying to recover the three points we dropped at home [to Stoke].”
Before Liverpool’s visit to the Etihad Stadium for the second match of the campaign, Pellegrini said that, because Brendan Rodgers’ side are title rivals, the contest was a “six-pointer”.
Big rivals
The Chilean defines the games against Arsenal and Chelsea in the same way. “Of course, against big rivals it’s always a match of six points but more for the home team,” he said. “For our team when you play against big teams it’s a very motivated game for all the players so it’s always a game of six points because, if we can beat Arsenal at their ground, for our team that is very good.”
It is understood that Pellegrini has considered replacing his goalkeeper Joe Hart with Willy Caballero as City embark upon the trio of matches. "I really don't know, we'll see game by game. We'll play against Arsenal and one hour and 15 minutes before kick-off you will know which goalkeeper starts. I'm just thinking about Arsenal and on Sunday we'll start thinking about Bayern," he said.
Last season, City defeated Arsenal 6-3 at the Etihad but the manager played down the relevance of that result to today's match. "We drew 1-1 against Arsenal at Emirates after that game we won here, so it's a different game and we're not thinking about what happened last year," said Pellegrini. "It is a strong team with Alexis Sanchez, a very important player, now with [Danny] Welbeck. They always have a very good team but this year they have more players.
"It is a difficult game, a difficult fixture because we have a difficult week. We started better than I thought against Newcastle and Liverpool [winning both] with so many players out with just a few days to prepare those games. After that it was a surprise maybe to lose against Stoke, but I don't think we played bad. Now we have this week with two difficult games in the Premier League and a difficult game in the Champions League."
Pellegrini has only Fernando and Stevan Jovetic injured. “We have Fernando injured, he has a muscle problem, and also Stevan Jovetic – he came back from his national team with a problem in his hamstring. I hope Stevan could be fit next week, thought I am not sure,” he said.
