Manuel Pellegrini Insists The FA Cup Format Must Change

Manuel Pellegrini the manager of Manchester City has insisted that something must change in the way the FA Cup is formatted to help teams playing in Europe. Pellegrini has reiterated he will be forced to field a team of youngsters in the FA Cup fifth round against Chelsea because the fixture was moved to Sunday two days before they travel Ukraine to face Dynamo Kiev in the Champions League on Wednesday.

City officials held talks with the FA in an attempt to move the game to Saturday to no avail as Pellegrini had this so say “In other leagues, they try to help the teams in the Champions League a little bit more, because it is not so difficult to change one game on one day. I don't want to talk lightly about this but the people in charge must study it. The other leagues do it so we must do it here too, if you want to be successful in Europe. Something must change. The FA Cup is difficult because it's on a weekend, so you must postpone games and arrive at the end of the season with more to play. There are so many games at the end and it is difficult to play all of them. Some things are not correct in this cup. Unfortunately for us, because of injuries and we have to play in the Champions League, we just have 13 first-team players available to play, so we will see what the best team is that we can play in the FA Cup”.

City are without Eliaquim Mangala, Samir Nasri, Jesus Navas, Kevin De Bruyne and Wilfried Bony, who are all sidelined with injury.