Captain Vincent Kompany will miss Manchester City’s final Champions League group game – against Borussia Monchengladbach – with a calf injury.
The 29-year-old has been sidelined with the problem since early November.
Striker Sergio Aguero, defender Martin Demichelis and midfielder Samir Nasri are all injured too.
City have already ensured their place in the last 16, but could overtake Italian side Juventus at the top of the group with victory.
Editor’s Note: Although Manchester City have secured qualification to the next stage they will want to win the group to avoid the obvious big guns such as Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid
To do that they need to win tonight at The Etihad and hope that Juventus lose away to Sevilla. Quite a big ask as you can imagine but first City to make sure they uphold their end of the bargain.
That means their performance is going to have to be a lot better than the one they gave away at Stoke on Saturday Lunchtime. City were second to everything that day and will Manuel Pellegrini will have to revitalise a side which is missing the spine of it’s team and without Vincent Kompany are looking a different prospect right now.
Tonight they face a Monchengladbach side who are 3rd in the Bundesliga and also 3rd in the group and currently sitting in the Europa League position. That means if Manchester City end up winning the group then Monchengladbach will have no European Football come the new year.
Gladbach had a terrible start to the season, losing their first 5 games but have seen a revival of form since then winning 8 out of their last 10. Tonight though I think City will have enough to win but it will probably take some magic from Kevin De Bruyne to be the difference as Wilifred Bony has not been a suitable replacement for Sergio Aguero as of late. City to win tonight but still finish 2nd in the group.