It's only lowly Leicester visiting the Etihad tonight but for Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini the match represents one of the most important of his 20-month reign.
Lose to the Premier League's basement team and the pressure weighing on his shoulders will become even greater.
It's been a poor year so far for City. Knocked out of the FA Cup by Middlesbrough, beaten in the league by Arsenal and Liverpool, trailing Barcelona 2-1 in the Champions League last 16, they also face another headache with a trip to the Nou Camp still to come. Setbacks that stacked up have led some to question whether Pellegrini might be heading for the exit.
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According to Sky Sports reports, prior to Pellegrini's appointment "chief executive Ferran Soriano said City's ambitions were to win five trophies in five seasons".
Pellegrini delivered two in his first season [the Premier League title and the league cup] but with three months of the season remaining City's best hopes of winning any silverware look to be in the Premier League, though they trail leaders Chelsea by five points having played a game more.
Asked ahead of tonight's game against Leicester if he’s feeling the strain, Pellegrini replied: "I don't feel any pressure, especially from the media. I feel pressure only when I don't see my team playing the way I want to do it."
As for the board's trophy-a-season target, Pellegrini dismissed the idea, saying: "When I signed the contract, I was never told I must win a title every year or that I must win five trophies in five years. That was a sentence of Ferran. That is perfectly normal. But maybe you can win two in one year and one in another, the other another two."
Nevertheless Pellegrini is an intelligent and astute man, and will be aware that his predecessor, Roberto Mancini, was sacked in May 2013, 12 months after he guided the club to their first Premier League title in 44 years.
But he was bullish when asked if he was aware rumours linking both Pep Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti to the City job: "I only think about the present," he retorted. "You never know what will happen in the future…to think about the future is the worst thing because you are just speculating about a lot of things. It is important to live life in the present."
Meanwhile one of the men linked to Pellegrini's job has denied he has any interest in the position. "Of course I'll stay here… I am not waiting for a contract offer from anyone else," said Pep Guardiola, the coach of Bayern Munich, when asked about the City rumours.
Speaking before today's German Cup game against Eintracht Braunschweig, Guardiola said it was his intention to see out the final 18 months of his contract at Bayern. "I want to fulfil my contract and do my job well, that is all I am thinking about at the moment," he said. "I still have a year and a half left on my contract. We will sit together in the summer and then we'll see how things go."
