Hoffenheim v Manchester City preview: Pep Guardiola looking for response

Manchester City will be aiming to bounce back from their opening Champions League defeat when they travel to play Hoffenheim on Tuesday.

Pep Guardiola's side suffered an opening-week defeat to Lyon, which has increased the pressure for this encounter in Germany.

City, who strolled past Brighton 2-0 on Saturday, are unbeaten in their last five Champions League games against German opponents (W4 D1) since a 1-0 defeat to Bayern Munich in 2014 when Guardiola was in charge of the Bundesliga side.

Guardiola admits the pressure is on his side to deliver in this competition.

"In the Champions League we don't have time to lose a lot of games and we lost the first one," Guardiola said. "We have five finals and tomorrow is the first one."

Winning the Champions League is a long-term ambition of the club but they fell to Liverpool at the quarter-final stage last season and captain Vincent Kompany expects the competition to prove just as difficult this term.

Kompany said: "I'd love to win a European trophy with City but it's such a tough competition to win. Across Europe there are about eight teams with just as much of a claim.

"We've got to deal with the fact we lost to Lyon. We'll worry about Hoffenheim first and if we get momentum anything is possible."

Team news

Sergio Aguero is expected to be fit for Manchester City.

The Argentina striker played just over an hour against Brighton on Saturday because of the foot problem that has hampered him in recent games but he has trained and was fit to travel.

Benjamin Mendy (foot) is still missing and usual deputy at left-back, Fabian Delph, also has a knock, meaning Oleksandr Zinchenko is again likely to feature.

Kevin De Bruyne (knee) is back in training but not yet ready to return while goalkeeper Claudio Bravo (Achilles) is out long term.

Stats

• This will be the first ever meeting in any competition between Germans TSG 1899 Hoffenheim and English side Manchester City.

• In Hoffenheim's only previous meeting with English opponents, they lost 6-3 on aggregate to Liverpool in the 2017/18 Champions League qualifying play-off round.

• Hoffenheim have won just one of their previous nine matches in European competition (D3 L5), beating Istanbul Basaksehir in last season's Europa League.

• Manchester City have conceded 2+ goals in each of their last four Champions League games; they last conceded at least two goals in five consecutive matches back in March 2014.

• Manchester City manager Guardiola met Hoffenheim six times whilst manager of Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga; he won five and lost none of those meetings (D1), scoring 2+ goals on each occasion.

• Manchester City coach Guardiola has lost five of his last six Champions League games as manager (W1), as many as he lost in his previous 28 combined (W18 D5 L5).

• Hoffenheim's Florian Grillitsch is looking to become the first ever Austrian player to score in his first two Champions League appearances.

• Manchester City's Aguero has had a hand in more Champions League goals for the Citizens than any other player (32 - 26 goals, 6 assists). Aguero both scored and assisted in his last CL away game vs Basel in February 2018.

Predictions.

The-Sports-Blog predicts 3-0