Manchester City - Barcelona 18.02.2014 19:45 GMT
The knockout stage of the Champions League starts spectacularly with a match between Manchester City and Barcelona. Manchester City perform greatly in front of own audience this season, scoring an average of 3.59 goals in a home game. Barcelona have played rather poorly in their away matches of the Champions League, but the bookmakers define them as the favorite to win this match.
This season Manchester City conceded only two losses at home in all competitions (Chelsea and Bayern Munich ). Unlike past performances of the team in the Champions League, they now play really strong in this tournament, and even managed to defeat the current champions at their own ground. Manuel Peligrini is a proven expert when it comes to knockout stages in the most prestigious football tournament. The manager was able to achieve good results in the Champions League with Villarreal and Malaga, getting them respectively to the semi-finals and quarter-finals. Now, however, Peligrini has a top class squad and the expectations for a good performance this year are huge.
Barcelona dropping just in the second round of the competition will definitely be a surprise, but this does not seem impossible. Barcelona managed only one modest away win with 0:1 in the Champions League. Furthermore, this win came against Celtic, which were down to 10 men. Earlier this month the Catalans conceded a surprising defeat at home to Valencia, and the statistics of their last 4 away games shows 2 wins and 2 draws. In the last round Barcelona defeated Rayo Vallecano with 6:0, but this success against a team stuggling to stay in La Liga, is unlikely a confidence boost for Barca.
A serious problem for the home team no doubt is the lack of Sergio Aguero, who is injured . In his absence the last few matches City had serious difficulty scoring some goals, as they failed to score in two consecutive games. Negredo is also still with a light trauma in the hand, but he may appear in the first eleven for this meeting, in view of the poor performance of Dzeko lately. Nastasić is another player for the home side with injury. Manchester City`s defenders must play their strongest game so far if they are to successfully stop Messi and Neymar.
For this clash it can be said that newbies face experience. Yaya Toure is the only one of Manchester City to lift the Champions League trophy and he did that playing for Barcelona. Unlike the home side, this team of Barcelona has vast experience of games in the Champions League and this may play a decisive role in qualifying further in the tournament.
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