Manuel Pellegrini addressed a lively media audience in the Vietnamese capital and provided an update on the squad’s pre-season progress as well as Fabian Delph’s condition.
“We are very happy here in Vietnam – we only arrived yesterday but we had an unbelievable welcome at the airport” said the City boss.
“We just arrived yesterday so I have not seen much of the city but I did get a chance to go out this morning and I can say that it’s a very beautiful city. We’re very pleased to be here.
“I think that for our team it’s an important game because we’re in pre-season and we’re near to the start of the Premier League – we have just two more games.
“For our team, it’s very important to continue to improve in pre-season.
“We are going to have the best team we can put on at the moment.
“We have problems with some of the players but we’ll see Sterling, Joe and the other important players in our team with us.
“I don’t have any information about the Vietnamese team at the moment but tonight I will look into and then I will have plenty of information about the game.
“We will watch games they’ve played before – especially the one against Arsenal recently.
Fabian Delph’s City debut was cut-short in Melbourne on Tuesday with the midfielder forced off following an apparent hamstring injury sustained in a challenge with Real Madrid’s Luka Modric.
Pellegrini explained why the England man hadn’t made the trip to Hanoi:
“Fabian stayed in Australia as the doctor said it was not good for him to fly here. In the next 48 hours he will fly home then we will find the extent of the injury.”
Sat alongside Pellegrini, Joe Hart dismissed claims that the wet and humid conditions which greeted the players’ arrival in Vietnam would pose troublesome:
“We’re used to playing in all sorts of conditions and we’ll adapt to it. We have a training session tonight so we’ll be ready for tomorrow.”
