Manchester City travel to Monaco on Wednesday evening as they look to build on their opening matchday win against Napoli. Second-half goals by Erling Haaland and Jeremy Doku gave the Blues a 2-0 victory earlier in the month and face the team that put them out of the 2016\/17 campaign on away goals.<\/p>\n
City beat the French side 5-3 at the Etihad Stadium in February 2017, but a 3-1 loss in the second leg saw the teams tied 6-6 on aggregate. Monaco progressed thanks to their goals in Manchester, but it did give manager Pep Guardiola a first-hand look at future Blues Bernardo Silva and Benjamin Mendy, who started both matches.<\/p>\n
The Blues will be eager to avoid a similar defeat on Wednesday night and will be hoping to make it two wins from two in the principality.<\/p>\n
Monaco have started the season well, with four wins and two defeats from their opening six matches. They currently sit in fourth place in Ligue One, three points behind leaders PSG and second-placed Lyon, with Marseille just above and Strasbourg just below on the same number of points.<\/p>\n
With 14 goals, Monaco are Ligue One\u2019s top scorers, however, having conceded 10 goals, they have one of the leakiest defences in the league. In fact, Angers, Nantes, Le Havre and Auxerre, who occupy four of the bottom five places in the league, have each conceded fewer than Monaco.<\/p>\n
Monaco started their season with a 3-1 home win over Le Havre, before losing 1-0 away to Lille. A 3-2 home win over Strasbourg, a 2-1 win at Auxerre and a 5-2 home win over Metz sent them up the table. However, a 3-1 loss last weekend at Lorient left the side wanting once more.<\/p>\n
In the Champions League, Monaco got their campaign off to the worst possible start with a 4-1 defeat at Club Brugge. The visitors were 3-0 down at half-time and conceded a fourth with 15 minutes to go. Ansu Fati scored an injury time consolation for the French side.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a couple of familiar names in the Monaco squad that may give the Blues something to think about. Goalscoring has fallen to Fati, who has four so far this season. He has scored three in Ligue One, and, scarily, has only attempted four shots, giving him a goal conversion rate of 75%. Japanese midfielder Takumi Minamino has weighed in with two goals, as has Maghnes Akliouche and George Ilenikhena.<\/p>\n
Assists have fallen to Lamine Camara, who has three from five games. Camara has attempted 224 passes, 193 of which have been completed, giving him a pass accuracy of 86%. Minamino also has an assist, as does Akliouche so if City want anything from Wednesday\u2019s match, they need to pay particular attention to these four.<\/p>\n
Eric Dier, formerly of Spurs and ex-United misfit Paul Pogba also form part of the Monaco squad.<\/p>\n
Austrian manager Adi H\u00fctter is the man charged with ending Monaco\u2019s nine-year wait to be crowned Ligue One champions. Hutter joined the French side in July 2023 and lead Monaco to the runners-up spot, nine points behind champions PSG.<\/p>\n
Hutter has overseen 91 matches with Monaco, winning 48 and losing 24, giving him a win ratio of 53%.<\/p>\n
City went to Monaco in February 2017 defending a 5-3 first leg lead. Kylian Mbappe and Fabinho levelled the aggregate score by half-time, but a goal by Leroy Sane put the Blues 6-5 ahead and seemingly heading through. However, a goal six minutes later by Tiemoue Bakayoko levelled the scores again and the French side went through, courtesy of the three goals they scored at the Etihad Stadium in the first leg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester City travel to Monaco on Wednesday evening as they look to build on their opening matchday win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[155018,748,393,4884,2465,150663,155019,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-463670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-blue-takes-manchester-city-opinion","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-manchester","13":"tag-manchester-city-match-previews","14":"tag-manchester-city-uefa-champions-league","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115294541312742865","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}