Man City find their Kyle Walker replacement but two players rue missed Champions League chance

Pep Guardiola's team selection for Manchester City's 2-0 Premier League win against Brentford on Wednesday evening gave a pretty clear indication of how he will address a dilemma facing him in the Champions League.

Thanks to a needless red card picked up in the final group stage game against RB Leipzig back in December, Kyle Walker will be out of European action for a while. City have appealed the three-match suspension handed to him by UEFA for a challenge made on Andre Silva, but at the very least he will miss the first leg of City's round of 16 tie against Sporting next Tuesday.

While defenders are rarely viewed as City's most important players, the fact is that they probably are. All four members of the backline play crucial roles in building attacks, with Walker bringing the added bonus of being able to use his pace to snuff out counter-attacks.

City will have to make do without him for one game at least and if the Brentford game is anything to go by, it will be John Stones who replaces him.

When the team news came out an hour before kick-off many assumed that Joao Cancelo would shift across to right-back, with Stones and Dias at centre-back and Aymeric Laporte on the left. Instead, though, Stones slotted straight in for Walker, allowing the other three to stay in their usual positions.

So what does this mean for everyone involved?

Stones grew into the game well after a mixed first-half, which ended with him gifting Brentford a decent opportunity when he slipped as he tried to control a pass from Dias.

That aside though, he looked right at home on the right side of defence. While he did not offer the overlapping option that Walker can, in the second half he played the role of the 'inverted' full-back well, moving