Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City face a difficult groupHELL FOR PELL: The City boss sees his side face Bayern Munich, Roma and CSKA in the Champions League [GETTY]<\/p>\n
Manuel Pellegrini’s side will have to work extra hard if they want to escape the group stages for the second season running.<\/p>\n
The English champions were drawn paired along with Bayern Munich last season, finishing as runners-up to the eventual semi-finalists, after losing at home, and winning away to the German giants.<\/p>\n
Russian outfit CSKA Moscow are also paired with City for the second season running.<\/p>\n
Pellegrini will be wary on a lengthy-trip to eastern Europe, but should be confident of a pair of wins after City saw off the Russians twice in last year’s competition.<\/p>\n
They will also face Roma, who have former Chelsea and England star Ashley Cole in their squad.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The draw in full<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Group A: Atletico Madrid, Juventus, Olympiakos, Malmo.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Group B: Real Madrid, FC Basle, Liverpool, Ludogorets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Group C: Benfica, Zenit Saint Petersburg, Bayer Leverkusen, Monaco.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Group D: Arsenal, Borussia Dortmund, Galatasaray, Anderlecht.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Group E: Bayern Munich, Manchester City, CSKA Moscow, Roma.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Group F: Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Ajax, Apoel Nicosia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Group H: Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, Athletic Bilbao, BATE Borisov.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Group G: Chelsea, Schalke, Sporting Lisbon, Maribor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City face a difficult groupHELL FOR PELL: The City boss sees his side face Bayern Munich, Roma and CSKA in the Champions League [GETTY] Manuel Pellegrini’s side will have to work extra hard if they want to escape the group stages for the second season running. The English champions were drawn paired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4708,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions\/4708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}