Manchester City face Roma tonight, in a tie that for all intents and purposes will decide who will qualify for the next round from the group.

There are a multitude of permutations, but the most important are that a Manchester City win, plus a Bayern Munich win means City qualify. If Manchester City get a score draw with Roma, and CSKA lose to Bayern Munich, City go through.

Manchester City face a tough test against Roma, as shown by their previous meeting against the Italian side, but hopefully with a few players coming back into the the first team Man City can put forward a team fully capable of beating the Italian side.

David Silva, Edin Dzeko, Stefan Jovetic and Aleks Kolarov have all trained ahead of the game, and while not all of them can be expected to start the game, David Silva in particular could make a great impact coming off the bench.

Man City can put forward a team fully capable of beating the Italian side

This is arguably Manchester City’s biggest game this season. As a club, City have shown that they can be there or thereabouts in the chase for the premier league title. However, Manchester City’s well documented failures in Europe need to be addressed and arrested.

A strong Manchester City squad, obviously sans Sergio Aguero, should…should be too much for Roma. But you cannot discount Man City’s obvious discomfiture in Europe, with games they should win suddenly going south.

This is a time when a manager proves his worth. Pellegrini needs to not only impress the importance of this game upon City’s players, but also make sure that his preferred formation of 4-2-3-1 can deal a decent amount of damage on the opposition.

Personally, I see the game against Roma as at best, a 50/50 chance. At worst City are struggling to stake a claim in a comparably okay group. Manchester City will need to concentrate on their game down the wings, as Roma don’t have much pace in that area. If Dzeko has one of his good games, City will be able to play off that and we should be able to come away with the win, and qualification.