Platt: City not short of options

DAVID PLATT insists that Sergio Aguero’s groin problem does not leave Manchester City short on attacking alternatives with Carlos Tevez suspended.

Aguero looks to be touch and go for the visit of Aston Villa after the international break, meaning that Mario Balotelli and Edin Dzeko are Roberto Mancini’s only fit forwards.

Tevez is set to be interviewed as part of the internal investigation into his apparent refusal to come off the bench as a substitute in City’s 2-0 defeat to Bayern Munich last week.

But Platt is adamant City are not looking light in attack after Mancini, who flew to Italy shortly after the victory at Ewood Park, vowed that Tevez would never play for the club again.

Platt said: “I’m not really concerned, because we can play in different ways. Silva played off the front today. Yaya can play off the front.

“Samir Nasri can play off the front. We still have a lot of attacking options and Aguero does not look as bad as we first envisaged.”

City remain level on points with United at the top of the Premier League after their comprehensive victory in Lancashire.

Adam Johnson feels that the ruthless manner of their display shows that they have put the furore of last week behind them.

The England winger opened the scoring just before the hour before Mario Balotelli, Samir Nasri and Stefan Savic sealed the a sixth win in seven matches for the season, with 23 goals scored.

After losing Aguero and struggling to break down an initially stubborn Rovers team, Johnson acknowledged that City could have “crumbled”.

As it was they responded in some style to pour cold water on the doubts that had surfaced about the squad’s togetherness in the wake of the Tevez affair.

“We went out there and showed our resilience,” Johnson said. “After everything that’s happened and we came in at 0-0 a few heads could have gone down. We could have crumbled.

“But this shows the strength of the squad and the character we have here. After the restart we totally dominated the game, got the goals. We were fantastic.

“You could see we were together out there but the unity has never gone.

“People might have thought we looked like we’ve got unity in our squad but it’s always been there. But you can certainly say it was a good response to what happened this week.”