Manchester City vs. Bayern Munich: Issues and Decisions That Will Shape UCL Game

Motown legend Jimmy Ruffin passed recently. The singer was best known for his international hit, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, which includes the following lyrics:

"

As I walk this land of broken dreams,
I have visions of many things.
But happiness is just an illusion,
Filled with sadness and confusion.

"

So it goes with Manchester City's latest Champions League bid, which began—as it always does—with excitement and hope and now seems to be winding down to another empty ending.

City have two points through four matches in Group E and must now beat the group's dominant side, Bayern Munich, to have any legitimate hope of reaching the knockout stage.

Supporters' hearts are breaking all over the blue side of Manchester at the thought of what Bayern might do to their beloved Citizens.

City Are Feeling the Business End of Their Financial Fair Play Sanctions

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Toure will miss out on the Bayern match for his petulance against CSKA Moscow.

City manager Manuel Pellegrini has perhaps the easiest job of his season set for him in picking City's XI against Bayern.

Because of City's Financial Fair Play penalty, City only had 21 roster places to use in this tournament. At this point, Pellegrini has maybe 16 healthy, eligible players to choose from.

Fernandinho and Yaya Toure are out because of red cards they received against CSKA Moscow during City's most recent Champions League outing. David Silva, Edin Dzeko and Aleksandar Kolarov are all injured.

It is not all bad news. Any club that can start Sergio Aguero has a puncher's chance of winning. But it will take a minor miracle for City to overcome being so shorthanded against Bayern.

Bayern Are Astonishingly Good Right Now

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Little has gone wrong for Bayern thus far this season.

A Google search for "Bayern Munich" led directly to a Reuters match report of Bayern Munich 4-0 Hoffenheim.

Mario Gotze, Robert Lewandowski and Arjen Robben all scored for Bayern, with the team's current terrifying form encapsulated in the story's first sentence: "Bayern Munich continued their seemingly unstoppable charge toward the Bundesliga title when they hammered Hoffenheim on Saturday to extend their lead at the top."

Bayern lead Bundesliga by seven points through 12 matches played. In those 12 matches, Bayern have scored 31 goals and conceded three.

Three.

There is never a good time for a club like City to be taking Bayern on without Toure, Silva and Dzeko. But this might be among the worst imaginable.

City Must Hope for Bayern to Play with the Disinterest Borne of a Lack of Need

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Kompany must hope for Bayern to play a passive match at the Etihad.

City's best hope for a win against Bayern comes from the knowledge that Bayern might not try all that hard to win this match themselves.

Bayern recently lost Philipp Lahm to a broken ankle suffered in training. The German side has a surplus of gifted players, but they hardly need to be risking further injuries to their best players, given the mathematical realities of this match.

While City are clinging to faint hopes of knockout-round qualification, Bayern are already home and dry in first place in Group E after their comfortable victory over AS Roma earlier this month.

City would love to see Bayern boss Pep Guardiola field a weakened side for this match at the Etihad.

Pellegrini Will Have Tough Questions to Answer If City Miss the Knockout Stage

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No man is an island, but Pellegrini comes pretty close these days.

Ordinarily, it would be proper to wait until City fail to qualify for the Champions League knockout stage before speculating about what such a development would mean for Pellegrini's job.

The English media do not always subscribe to propriety.

"If they do go out Pellegrini knows he will have missed a key target—possibly the key target—that was set for him this season: to go one stage further than last season in the Champions League and to reach the quarter‑finals," wrote Jason Burt in The Telegraph recently.

Pellegrini is too smart to deny it. "If we don’t continue to the round of 16 then of course it is a step back but we have to play two more games and we will see what happens in those games," Pellegrini said according to Burt.

If City fail to beat Bayern, there will probably be no point in waiting for City's result at Roma to determine what missing out on the round of 16 will mean for Pellegrini. City need six points from these next two Group E matches against Bayern and Roma to even think about sneaking into the knockout stage.

Win or (Preferably) Bust

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Dzeko and company shook up the world last December.

Can City actually beat Bayern? Sure they can. They beat Bayern at the Allianz Arena with a makeshift XI less than one calendar year ago.

Joleon Lescott, Micah Richards and Javi Garcia started for City that night, and Jack Rodwell appeared as a substitute.

Even with the injuries and the suspensions, Pellegrini will have far more quality to choose from in this match. With the possible exception of Dedryck Boyata, no one on the current City Champions League roster is a lesser player than Lescott, Richards or Garcia.

But if City cannot win this match, it may be best to lose it and dispense with this season's European quest.

If it must end, the sooner the better. City can begin the unpleasant task of evaluating the manager and many of the players for fitness of purpose—i.e., Champions League success—sooner rather than later.

And whatever they do, City need to stay out of the Europa League. City have enough fixture congestion problems without getting into that mess.