Yaya Toure has been passed fit to face Aston Villa after recovering from a foot injury sustained at Wembley.
Manuel Pellegrini revealed that he will still be without Fabian Delph, Kevin De Bruyne and Samir Nasri in his pre-match press conference.
“Yaya had an important kick in his heel – that’s why he couldn’t play on Wednesday but he’s OK now, no problem,” Pellegrini said.
“The same three players have a few weeks more – Delph, Nasri and De Bruyne.”
City will look to end a run of three consecutive Premier League defeats when Remy Garde brings his Midlands outfit to the Etihad on Saturday afternoon.
Pellegrini insists that his side will not give up on the title, despite being 10 points behind leaders Leicester following Wednesday’s 3-0 defeat to Liverpool.
“We were very frustrated about the result and the game we played but it’s the past,” Manuel explained.
“It seemed that we didn’t recover from the 120 minutes from Sunday. We didn’t play well. We conceded two goals in four minutes and the game was over.
“Remember the first season I was here, we needed to win the three games in hand and we won the three games. Everyone said we were out of it but we won the games and won the title.
“This group of players will never give up while we have the option to do it.
“We have one game in hand but it’s more important not to think about that but just to improve our Premier League performance. I thought last week we played two good games in the Capital One Cup and the Champions League.
“We are not going to give up - it’s a lot of points to the leaders. You never know when you are going to lose points. We must continue as far as we can and add the most amount of points we can, then we can see where we end up.
“We try to win every time we play - we just had a bad moment but we have another 33 points to try and arrange it.”
Aston Villa arrive in Manchester on Saturday looking to maintain their slim hopes of survival in the Premier League.
For that reason, Manuel believes it will be a tough examination of his side’s title credentials and revealed that City will not take Garde’s charges lightly.
“We play at home against the team in the worst position in the Premier League but the worst mistake we can make is thinking that we’ve already won the game,” Pellegrini warned.
“We must concentrate, try not to make mistakes. We know all teams in the relegation places will create a difficult game – I hope we can play our best performance and get the three points.
“We created a lot of chances [at Villa Park in the 0-0 draw].
“Maybe it was the first game Remy was in charge, we didn’t expect to draw, it was a game that I think we played well in but sometimes you don’t score.
“I am sure that we will find a team who will fight to the end until mathematics say they cannot survive.”
