Pellegrini: Man City can compete for world's best players

Manuel Pellegrini believes Manchester City have a good enough profile to attract the world's best players.

City are perennially linked to Barcelona ace Lionel Messi, while there have been reports they are trying to lure Bayern Munich boss Pep Guardiola to the Etihad Stadium.

And Pellegrini feels City have achieved a stature which allows them to compete with Europe's elite clubs for the game's top talents.

“If you want to be the most important people in football or one of the most important, you must be able to bring all the best players here," he told reporters.

“We are always trying to do it but it is not easy because there are a lot of clubs, five or six, that can do it also.

“That depends on the style, in the work but it is important not to give advantage in the options you have to buy those players.”

City will be without Sergio Aguero and Wilfried Bony for Saturday's meeting with Stoke, and the coach feels Kelechi Iheanacho is ready to step into the first team, insisting there is no need to buy replacements in January.

“The squad for this year is ready,” he added. "We are not thinking to replace for the amount of injuries we’ve had.

“It was a decision last year because we have the three players injured a lot of times before, so we didn’t want to take the risk to finish the year in the same way.

"But in that year Kelechi was one year younger so he was not the player he is today. We had Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic.

"Jovetic and Kun had a lot of injuries in the first half of the season and Dzeko also. That’s why we decided to bring Bony.

"I think in this case, the fourth [striker] should be Kelechi."