Jack Grealish has recovered from illness and comes back into the side while Josko Gvardiol will face the Club he left in the summer.
Stefan Ortega Moreno and Rico Lewis also start tonight’s game with Ederson, Nathan Ake, Julian Alvarez and Jeremy Doku all dropping to the bench.
City need to win or draw with the German visitors to guarantee top spot in Group G and a seeded place for the round-of-16 draw.
TEAMS
CITY XI: Ortega Moreno, Walker (C), Akanji, Dias, Gvardiol, Rodrigo, Lewis, Bernardo, Foden, Grealish, Haaland
Subs: Ederson, Carson, Phillips, Stones, Ake, Doku, Alvarez, Gomez, Bobb
LEIPZIG XI: Blaswich, Simakan, Klostermann, Lukeba, Raum, Haidara, Seiwald, Schlager, Simons, Forsberg (C), Openda
Subs: Gulacsi, Lenz, Poulsen, Baumgartner, Carvalho, Sesko, Heinrichs, Kampl
Tactics
Even with four changes, it will be a similar philosophy that City have adopted throughout the Champions League so far.
City have applied the highest percentage of pressure in the final third in the competition this season (46.7%) as well as averaging 71% possession across our four games.
Guardiola has brought in a new left-flank from the game with Liverpool, with Gvardiol and Grealish set to line up on that side.
Meanwhile, Lewis has excelled playing further forward in midfield in Europe and is likely to be alongside Bernardo Silva with Phil Foden on the right.
GOOD TO BE BACK?
There might be some disappointment for the visitors that Erling Haaland starts tonight as the Norwegian has scored more times against Leipzig than any other team in his club career – with 11 goal in seven appearances.
He scored five times the last time the two sides met at the Etihad in March as City won 7-0 in the second leg of our last-16 knockout tie.
However, they didn’t fair much better when we played in Manchester before the striker’s arrival with City winning 6-3 with five different scorers and an own goal in September 2021.
Indeed, Leipzig have lost their last four away Champions League matches in England by an aggregate score of 20-3 and are looking for their first away win in the country since February 2020, when they won 1-0 against Tottenham.
They have won both of their group games from home this season at Young Boys and Red Star ahead of tonight’s game.
Match stats
Tonight will be our sixth Champions League match against RB Leipzig, winning three of the previous five and losing one.
The 7-0 win remains the joint-biggest margin of victory for Pep Guardiola in a Champions League match (done three times), as well as Manchester City’s joint-biggest win in European competition (also 7-0 v Schalke 04 in March 2019).
RB Leipzig have won both of their away games in the Champions League this season (3-1 v Young Boys, 2-1 v Red Star), and could equal their longest winning streak away from home in the competition with a victory.
City are unbeaten in our last 17 games in the Champions League, with our last defeat in May 2022 against Real Madrid (semi-final, second leg). In the history of the European Cup/Champions League, Manchester United are the only English team to have had a longer unbeaten run (25 games between September 2007 and May 2009).
Xavi Simons, 20, has scored in his last two Champions League games. Only one Dutch player aged under 21 has scored in three consecutive appearances in the competition, with Patrick Kluivert doing so for Ajax in 1995.
Jeremy Doku has completed 17 of his 24 take-on attempts for Manchester City in the Champions League (71%). Despite only playing 146 minutes in the competition so far this term, no player has completed more take-ons than the Belgian winger through the first four matchdays.
No player has created more chances than RB Leipzig’s David Raum in the Champions League this season (15), while he also has the highest expected assists total in the competition (2.1 xA and two assists).
