How Man City should line up vs Sporting in Champions League fixture

It's a good job Manchester City have already near-guaranteed their spot in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, otherwise, they might be in a touch of bother.

That's because Pep Guardiola is down to about 14 available first-team players for their last-16 second-leg clash with vs Sporting on Wednesday. Thankfully, City won the opening match of the tie 5-0 and so it would take a spectacular meltdown for them not to advance.

That didn't quell the visible anger still raging within Guardiola when asked about Kyle Walker, who is serving the second match of a three-game suspension following his needless red card against RB Leipzig in the group stages. City will face Sporting without a senior right-back as Joao Cancelo is also unavailable due to illness.

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Nathan Ake is not back yet as the match has come too soon for him, with Ruben Dias, Cole Palmer and Zack Steffen all sidelined as well. Guardiola also added that Kevin De Bruyne is unlikely to start as he's a booking away from suspension.

"We don’t have many players, just 14 available, a few problems, Kyle suspended, Joao is sick," the Blues boss said. "Of course, we had an incredible result in the first leg, football is unpredictable, red cards, quality of opponent, we’ll take a top side as much as possible. Not many alternatives but will do the best team possible to win the game."

On Ake he added: "Yeah, he’s out too. Right now nobody else, but just three defenders so have to look at the second team and see what we have to do. We look at the training session and see what we have to do."

Read how our writers think City should line up below and use the interactive