City must prove genuine Euro credentials tomorrow

IT seems to have been lost in the tumult surrounding Carlos Tevez’s apparent refusal to play, but Manchester City’s Champions League hopes are hanging by a thread after their meek surrender in Munich two weeks ago.

One point from two games is poor return when you consider the squad Roberto Mancini has assembled at quite lavish expense over the past 22 months. And for a club whose goal is to be the greatest side in Europe, there can be no learning curve, no gradual ascent to the top of the mountain; rather, success must be instantaneous.

That means tomorrow’s game against Villarreal at the Etihad Stadium is must-win. With Bayern taking maximum points from their first two games and Napoli sitting pretty on four points, City have to take advantage of a Spanish side that are struggling to live up to their previous high standards.

Once Champions League semi-finalists, Villarreal are struggling to cope without their playmaker, Santi Cazorla, who decamped to City’s La Liga equivalent in Qatari-backed Malaga in the summer.

That gives City an opportunity to remind Europe they offer more than just a soap opera, and that in the likes of David Silva, Samir Nasri and Sergio Aguero, they have players who had already relegated Tevez to an afterthought before the Argentinian’s latest brush with infamy.

Yet while City’s group is tough, Manchester United’s is not — but they are still attempting to make a pig’s ear of it. An away draw in Benfica was hardly a bad result, but the woeful defending that saw Basel claim a 3-3 draw at Old Trafford last time out will have set alarm bells ringing.

SC Otelul Galati, for whom the sobriquet ‘unheralded’ could have been invented, are their opposition this week, with a trip to the Romanian champions likely to be more arduous than Alex Ferguson would have hoped.

And with a Manchester derby coming up on Sunday, a simple victory without any injuries would be just what Ferguson would have ordered.

As far as Arsenal are concerned, though, simple victories are few and far between. Having made a solid start to their Champions League group they head to Marseille on Wednesday for a game that pitches Arsene Wenger against the club whose match-fixing, in his view, denied him two titles whilst at Monaco in the late 1980s and early 90s.

The allegations against Bernard Tapie and his club left Wenger bitter, but there are more prosaic reasons for needing to win in the intimidating atmosphere of the Stade Velodrome. Wenger is living almost game-to-game at present, and the likes of Mathieu Valbuena, Lucho Gonzalez and Andre Ayew will test the confidence of his side.

Indeed, the only one of the English contingent cruising through their group are Chelsea. A home tie with Genk is unlikely to set pulses racing at Stamford Bridge.

Instead, Napoli hosting Bayern Munich and Inter Milan’s trip to Joe Cole’s Lille should be of far more interest to the neutral — and who knows, those clubs may even persuade their subs to play.