Pellegrini upbeat despite stalemate

Manuel Pellegrini insists his Manchester City squad has enough depth to cope with challenging for two major competitions despite a difficult start to an important week.

Pellegrini's team heads to the Czech Republic to face Viktoria Plzen in the Champions League on Tuesday - a competition that has seen City fail to get out of the group stages in its previous two campaigns.

After that it hosts Manchester United at Eastlands in the first Manchester derby of the Premier League season.

But those two key games come in the wake of a frustrating scoreless draw at Stoke on Saturday that saw Pellegrini's first attempts at rotation fail to come off.

The Chilean stuck with a similar starting lineup for each of his first three Premier League games in charge but included Stevan Jovetic and Alvaro Negredo in his team for the first time at the Britannia Stadium.

"I don't think we must expect to win every match," Pellegrini said. "Of course we want to win every game but it's impossible and it's a special week for us because we haven't had the players (due to the international break). I won't always be happy when I draw away, but for this match it's good."

Stoke is now unbeaten in four matches since a 1-0 defeat at Liverpool on the opening day of the season.

(China Daily 09/16/2013 page24)