Man City ready for their European adventure

Manchester City gets their Champions League campaign underway this week when they lock horns with Sevilla on Tuesday at Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan. Manchester City will look to start their Champions League campaign on the right foot by winning when they travel to Spain to take on Sevilla. Champions League favourites Manchester City begin their Group G campaign with a trip to struggling Sevilla. Sevilla is working, and it would be a bit of a surprise if Pep Guardiola’s team does not walk out of Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan Stadium with maximum points.

Man City, defending Premier League champions, has flirted with winning the competition for each of the last two Champions League, falling short against Chelsea in the 2021 final and suffering a heartbreaking semi-final defeat in the 2022 season against eventual winners Real Madrid. Only 14 teams have won more UCL games since 1992 than Manchester City (56), but all 56 of City’s wins came from 2011-12 – the only clubs with more wins from 2011-12 are Real Madrid (85), Bayern Munich (85) and Barcelona (69).

EPL champions Manchester City are +220 favourites this season, followed by French champions PSG at +550, the previous season’s runners-up Liverpool at +650, Bayern Munich at +700, Real Madrid at +1100, and Barcelona at +140. With Sevilla such a mess, the away leg against struggling Sevilla looks like a safe bet. There was no third consecutive hat-trick from Erling Haaland on the weekend, with Manchester City dropping another two points early, even though the towering Norwegian scored ten goals for the Premier League campaign at Villa Park. Erling Haaland has been essentially unstoppable this season and will be targeting his first European goal in UEFA’s Champions League as a Premier League champion. The focus of the pre-game press conference on whether Haaland would be able to be the difference between winning a European Cup or failing once more was on the fact that his acquisition to the City team has made the Blues clear favourites to win the Champions League for the first time. Furthermore, Guardiola was certain that his team could not rely exclusively on Haaland to get them through tense matches if they wanted to succeed in the Champions League.

It was anticipated that Guardiola would clarify the injury situation, and it did. Walker did not play, even though Stones trained with City on Monday morning. In the draw against Aston Villa, the full-back hobbled off. Although Kalvin Phillips was injured in Barcelona a few weeks ago, he participated in the training session. The last time Walker was not used in the UCL matches, it proved to be a heavy loss for Manchester City. Real Madrid scored all of their six goals while Walker was not on the field, the full-back was not played in the first leg due to an injury, and in the second leg, he was subbed off before the full-time whistle.