Champions League: How Manchester City Will Line Up Against CSKA Moscow

Manchester City's XI against CSKA Moscow will take the pitch at the Etihad this week knowing that a win will all but secure passage to the knockout stage of the Champions League and that even a draw will put the Sky Blues in a strong position to qualify.

Still, there are almost certainly uneasy feelings in the City changing room.

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini's recent demotion of longtime incumbent keeper Joe Hart brings to mind one of the dozens of seminal scenes in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas."

Late in the second act of the film, crime boss Paul Cicero becomes concerned that his associates are dealing drugs. His concern is not the crime itself but the potential involvement of American federal authorities policing drug trade—and the mandatory minimum prison sentences that accompany convictions.

Cicero has seen another boss, Gribbs, sentenced to significant prison time for a drug conviction, a sentence that will probably foreclose any chance of Gribbs seeing daylight as a free man again.

So Cicero forcefully tells the film's protagonist Henry Hill (who is hip deep in narcotics trade) that Cicero wants his underlings (including Hill) to stop dealing drugs. Now.

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Listen, I ain't gonna get (expletive deleted) like Gribbs, understand. Gribbs is 70 years old and (he's) gonna die in prison, I don't need that. So I'm warning everybody, EVERYBODY. It could be my son, it could be anybody. Gribbs got 20 years just for saying hello to some (guy) who was sneaking behind his back selling junk, I don't need that, ain't gonna happen to me, you understand.

"

Pellegrini's benching of Hart was his tacit statement to the entire City roster: Play well or lose your job, because I have neither the time nor the inclination to suffer for your mistakes. I am not going out of here like Roberto Mancini did.

The message is not lost on any of Pellegrini's players. Per Richard Jolly of ESPNFC.com:

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Pablo Zabaleta said that seeing Joe Hart being dropped has provided a warning to the rest of the Manchester City side that they must maintain their high standards or they will join him on the bench.

"

Zabaleta's quote was a bit more milquetoast (“Sometimes mistakes might cost [someone] their place but we are a big squad and we need to try to do well to keep the place in the team"), but it does not take a military-code-breaking specialist to read between those lines.

As for City's XI against CSKA Moscow, there is no good reason to believe Pellegrini will tinker with success.

City just hung a seven spot on Norwich City. None of those players were injured in the match. Were I Pellegrini, I would run it right back.

So my prediction for Pellegrini's XI is second verse same as the first: Pantilimon; Zabaleta, Clichy, Demichelis, Nastasic; Nasri, Silva, Fernandinho, Yaya Toure; Negredo, Aguero.

I cannot predict that City will win 7-0 against CSKA Moscow. But City would take any scoreline that translates to a win.

And if you are a City fan, so would you.