Manchester City 0 Dynamo Kiev 0 (Man City win 3-1 on aggregate)
No goals, little excitement, but what do Manchester City care? The Sky Blues are in the quarter-finals of the Champions League for the first time after their goalless draw at home to Dynamo Kiev.
Defending a 3-1 advantage from the first leg of their last 16 tie, City controlled the tie from the start and such was their command they rarely felt motivated to try and extend their lead. After a first-half in which neither side managed a shot on target, City briefly stirred themselves in the second period with Jesus Navas rattling the woodwork and Yaya Toure forcing Kiev keeper Olexandr Shovkovskiy into a save.
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The final whistle drew the biggest cheer of the night for the Etihad crowd, who can now look forward to Friday's draw and start praying they don't get paired with Barcelona, who have knocked them out of the competition in the previous two seasons and should have little trouble killing off Arsenal at the Camp Nou tonight.
But whoever City face in the quarter-final they'll probably have to make do without captain Vincent Kompany. The talismanic skipper and central defender limped off four minutes into the match after suffering the 14th calf injury of his career. Asked later about Kompany's chances of making the quarter-final, manager Manuel Pellegrini replied: "With muscle injuries it is minimum of a month...[but] we will know on Wednesday or the day after how serious it is."
That wasn't the only injury blow suffered by City with Kompany's defensive partner Nicolas Otamendi also withdrawn from the fray midway through the first half and though he's a doubtful starter for Sunday's Premier League Manchester derby, the Argentine is expected to have recovered for the quarter-final.
Describing himself as "satisfied" with the evening's work, Pellegrini admitted that he had sent his team out with instructions to protect their first-leg advantage. "We didn't want to force the game because we didn't need to," he told reporters. "They had to take more risks than us so we just wanted to keep the ball... Dynamo didn't create many chances apart from one at the end. It was a tactical game but that was the game we had to play tonight."
When the inevitable arrived as to who he would prefer to face in the next round, Pellegrini replied: "I think when you are in this stage, all the teams are very difficult. I keep having in my mind that the team that is better than all the other teams is Barcelona. I think all the other teams are similar."
