The French defender, who has been missing since the League Cup semi-final first leg against Everton, has recovered from his injury and will be vying for selection.
Pellegrini told journalists at his pre-match press conference: “We have similar squad that we played in the last Premier League game. The only player that has recovered is Mangala.
“We had to make a difficult decision against Chelsea but it was the only choice we could make in this moment. We had just 13 players so it was our intention to continue in all competitions and we couldn’t do that.
“This is absolutely different – we will try to continue knowing we have a difficult game tomorrow.
“The important thing is the performance of our important players tomorrow. It’s the first 90 minutes of a 180 minute match, no matter what happens, it’s not over tomorrow.”
Pablo Zabaleta was also on duty at the press conference where he revealed his motivation to help City to take the next step in the Champions League.
Zabaleta said: “I know we’re coming in from a big defeat but now we’re 100% motivated for tomorrow. Hopefully we can play well enough to get a good result.
“We’ve played a lot of games in January and February but I think that tomorrow we will see players who’ve had a rest last weekend. Physically and mentally we must be fresh for tomorrow and play at 100%.
“We know we’ve been playing against the best teams in Europe. In the last four years we’ve been learning a lot about the way you must play in these games.
“We played the best team in the world at this stage for the last two years – I’m not going to say that tomorrow is going to be easy, they have the mentality to play in these types of games as they’ve played in this competition before many times.”
