• Champions League

Pellegrini calls for Champions League changes

Manuel Pellegrini believes Manchester City's Champions League group is unbalanced and said the Premier League champions deserved to be in pot one when the draw was made.

City face Bayern and CSKA Moscow - the German and Russian champions respectively - in the group phase for a second successive season, as well as Seria A outfit Roma.

However, Pellegrini cannot fathom how City were drawn from pot two - allowing them to be matched with Bayern - when England has one of the strongest domestic leagues in the world.

"It is, for the champions," Pellegrini told the club's official website. "I think that the champions of England and the champions of the German league, with both leagues being among the best leagues in Europe, they deserve to be in pot one.

"This season we again have Bayern Munich, Manchester City and CSKA Moscow. I do not think it is good to repeat the group exactly as the year before.

"I don't think it´s good that the teams who play qualification because they finished fourth in their domestic leagues are in pot one, where the strongest teams should be.

"In our group we have three domestic champions, the English champions, the German champions, and the Russian champions. So our group seems a bit unbalanced.

"I think we need to find a modification whereby, for example, all teams who play qualification go into pot four and all champions of their respective leagues and have a lot of points in Europe [a high coefficient] go into pot one.

"There is a need for some modifications to not let something like what happened to us happen again, and then on the other hand for the teams who play preliminaries to not appear with the most important ones in Europe."

Bayern manager Pep Guardiola has given City a potential boost by confirming Franck Ribery will miss the clash at the Allianz Arena, while Arjen Robben is also a doubt.

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