Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini admitted he does have a little sympathy for under-fire United counterpart Louis van Gaal.<\/p>\n
But Pellegrini has no doubt the Dutchman can handle the pressure and it will not alter his determination to claim a vital derby at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday.<\/p>\n
City, having fallen off the pace in the Premier League title race, are facing a challenge to hold onto a top-four spot and United could apply considerable pressure with victory over their neighbours – a City defeat could see them drop to fifth this weekend if West Ham win at Chelsea on Saturday.<\/p>\n
But United’s season has been a turbulent one with Van Gaal having been heavily criticised for both performances and results and finding his future the subject of continual speculation.<\/p>\n
Pellegrini said: “I think that Louis van Gaal has a lot of experience. When you are managing big teams, you cannot expect not to receive criticism if you do not win and he has the experience to manage that situation.<\/p>\n
“Always – and I am not only talking about Louis van Gaal – when a manager is in a bad moment, you want to support him.<\/p>\n
“But I don’t think he has any problems, with the experience he has of managing the big teams during his whole career. He is not maybe in a good moment but he knows how to manage.”<\/p>\n
United are in sixth place and suffered the indignity of being knocked out of the Europa League by old adversaries Liverpool on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Supporters used to success have become restless but Pellegrini is paying little attention to United’s situation as he expects it to count for little this weekend.<\/p>\n
He said: “I don’t think we can take advantage of that. I don’t know what has happened in Manchester United. It’s not my duty (to know) what happens with the fans or Louis van Gaal.<\/p>\n
“We will play against a strong team with a lot of history and they will do all they can to win that game, so we must not be trusting in those kind of things.<\/p>\n
“We must try to have a good performance to win the game on the pitch.<\/p>\n
“When you play a derby it doesn’t matter which positions you are fighting for. The important thing is to win that game because you have to wait for the next season, a lot of months, for the next one. It is always important to have that last win.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: TalkSport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini admitted he does have a little sympathy for under-fire United counterpart Louis van Gaal. But Pellegrini has no doubt the Dutchman can handle the pressure and it will not alter his determination to claim a vital derby at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday. City, having fallen off the pace in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}