Raheem Sterling faces big Man City challenge starting with Champions League fixture vs Sporting

Some of the players on the bench for the derby will have been stung by their omission, and will be handed the chance to show the manager they should have played after all. Raheem Sterling is foremost among them - his absence was the only real surprise of City’s team selection on Sunday.

He can have no complaints, as Jack Grealish was superb in the 4-1 hammering of the Reds, but he knows he faces a real fight to get back in the team. He looks like a player who could move on in the summer after Guardiola talked of “big changes” in the air - if that is not what he wants, his mission starts tonight.

With a 5-0 lead from the first leg, Guardiola has the perfect opportunity to give a run-out to youngsters like Liam Delap, James McAtee and Luke Mbete, who have been patiently sitting on the subs’ bench in recent weeks. History tells us that the City boss shows too much respect to the Champions League and the opposition and rarely plays a weakened team, no matter how meaningless the fixture. But in the knockout phase, with no other clubs affected by the result, he might just be tempted to see how the youngsters perform, especially with so many first-teamers unavailable.

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The injuries to Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake mean that for the moment the Blues are down to just two fit senior centre backs. John Stones and Aymeric Laporte proved they are more than capable, and in an attacking sense probably better than Dias, in the derby. But they cannot be expected to carry on shouldering the burden, so the fitness and form of Nathan Ake is now an issue, and he is expected back in training in the next few days.

The left back is likely to start as Guardiola rotates again from his