Sevilla vs Manchester City: Manuel Pellegrini backs City fans’ revolt as progress beckons

Victory over Sevilla could send them through to the Champions League knock-out stages with two games to spare

Manuel Pellegrini (GETTY IMAGES)

Manchester City landed in an Andalusian rainstorm last night, kicking and fighting as they so often are against the European football establishment, insisting that their supporters have every right to defy a Uefa investigation by drowning out the governing body’s anthem with their boos again on Tuesday.

The Uefa match delegate included this supposed act of insurrection in his match report when the two sides met in Manchester two weeks ago and though Tuesday’s representative at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan may well choose not to – further reducing the slim prospect of City being charged and fined two weeks from now – the City manager, Manuel Pellegrini, evoked the spirit of Peterloo, after a fashion. “I think that everyone has the right to boo or protest on how they see things. It is important how they do it. Everyone has the right to do it,” he said. “If they boo, Uefa are not doing something right.”

The latest riposte was welcome. The over-zealous official at the Etihad Stadium has embarrassed Uefa, especially at a time when the word from their Nyon headquarters is that all serious business has drawn to a halt during the suspension of president Michel Platini. But City’s talk cannot disguise that they yearn to be on the inside of the European football establishment, too. Though a win on Tuesday, coupled with a failure to do so by Borussia Mönchengladbach at home to Juventus, would put them through, the fragile state of this qualifying group reveals a side still some distance from dominating Europe. Defeat would throw Group D wide open.

The most interesting aspect of Pellegrini’s discussion spoke to the knockout stages, which City aspire to reach as group winners for the first time. Asked why Spanish clubs persistently outperform the English – with Barcelona eliminating City in the past two seasons – he provided a pessimistic outlook for next spring. Diminishing levels of competition in La Liga, allied to the English winter workload and what he claimed was the elite Spanish sides having “the best players in the world” and “the same money or more money than every club in England” made the going very hard for sides like his own.

“I remember when I arrived here, there were six or seven important teams – not only Barcelona and Real Madrid,” he said. “But in the last few years they have one or two teams and Atletico Madrid last year. In England, it is very different. There are five very strong teams who can all win the league and [lower down] other teams have more money as well. The pace is higher. The most technical league in Europe is here in Spain but the best league is in England.”

Pellegrini did not reject the suggestion that the same obstacles would present all the same problems, as and when City face the Spanish elite.

The immediate challenge is a Sevilla side whose club shop is testament to a rich recent European pedigree: black and white images of captain Javi Navarro lifting the 2007 Uefa Cup aloft at Glasgow’s Hampden Park after a victory on penalties over Espanyol feature prominently.

Their struggle to make headway in La Liga – Saturday’s defeat at Villarreal, their fourth in 10 games, puts them 11th – left coach Unai Emery warning on Sunday that domestic work must be the priority. But Pellegrini knows from nine years’ work within these shores that he will find an esprit de corps and indefatigability in the tight, homespun stadium.

Comienza una nueva era (“Start a new new era”) declares one of the banners Pellegrini might have caught sight of as he walked into the place in the sheeting rain. It was a reference to the Andulucians taking the step up from the Europa League, which they have won for the past two years, to the Champions League and being ready to go again. Emery made a big play of the value of home advantage when he spoke yesterday. “We need to give them a feel of how difficult it is to come to our stadium and play against us,” he said. Emery suggested it was do or die, now.

It will help Pellegrini if Wilfried Bony can overcome some City supporters’ doubts about him. The striker, as well as that anthem, has been the subject of boos in the past few month. It was a sign of Bony’s struggle to take on the mantle of injured Sergio Aguero that Aleksandar Kolarov seized the ball to take the last-minute penalty against Norwich on Saturday that Bony had told would be his.

“I’d like to have taken the penalty, I wanted the ball. I asked if I could be allowed to shoot and they said OK,” said Bony, who had missed several chances in the game. “I think Fernandinho came and said it was someone else, so I left it. Kolarov came and he missed it.” With Kelechi Iheanacho not in City’s Champions League squad, Tuesday presents a clear chance.

“I think he needs trust. He is playing after many months of not being able to work normally, for different reasons,” Pellegrini said, a reference to the malaria which struck Bony this summer.

The Chilean is eyeing the rare luxury of knockout stage qualification with the long nights barely upon us. “Of course of it is a benefit to the Premier League [campaign] if you qualify as soon as you can,” he said. “It’s not easy to do it three or four games before the end.” The gulf in technical class can wait for another day.