Manuel Pellegrini has promised to pick a full Manchester City side for their FA Cup fourth round tie with Middlesbrough at the Etihad Stadium.
With a crucial Premier League game against league leaders Chelsea just a week away, Pellegrini might have been tempted to rest some of his stars against lower league opposition.
However, the Chilean has reiterated his desire to play for every trophy he can and will be treating the Championship’s second-placed side with due respect.
He said: “There are always opportunities for players to impress and stake a claim for a place but we will have a full week to recover before we play Chelsea so with that in mind, I will try and put out the strongest team I can.
“Middlesbrough may not be a Premier League team but they are fighting to win promotion and this will be a very difficult match and we need to be at our best to win.
“We are not in the Capital One Cup anymore and we want to do well in this competition because it was disappointing to lose in the quarter-final last season.”
The last time City met Middlesbrough was also in the FA Cup fourth round, five years ago when a Benjani goal settled the tie in favour of the Blues.
The more memorable encounter between the two sides is Boro’s 8-1 destruction of City in 2008, something most Blues fans will have tried hard to forget.
Boro will be no walkover this time round either though: they have conceded just 18 goals in 27 league games and have their eyes firmly set on a return to the Premier League.
Middlesbrough boss Aitor Karanka, Jose Mourinho’s assistant manager at Real Madrid, claims that his side will not be fazed by facing City’s multi-million pound line-up.
He said: “If football has one good thing it’s that the budget on the pitch sometimes doesn’t count for everything.
“If the richest teams won all the time, that wouldn’t be football.
“We’re going to play against one of the best squads in the world. The pressure is off us? If you think that, you’re going to concede five or six or seven or eight goals.
“They’ll be thoroughly prepared because they don’t want to lose to a Championship team, but they might have more problems scouting us than we do them.”
City will also have to contend with having travelled to the Middle East for a mid-season friendly with Hamburg, but Pellegrini was adamant that it had not affected their preparation.
“We are not worried about the travelling element,” said the 61-year-old. “There is only a few hours difference between and we will return to the CFA on Friday and prepare for the game as normal.
“It was the right time to have a break and we’ve enjoyed our stay in Abu Dhabi. Last January we played eight or nine games so it was important to have this time so we can return refreshed.”
Main image courtesy of Paul Currie/Action Images, with thanks.
