Manchester City-Sunderland Preview

Mar 12, 2010 - 5:19 PM CHRIS TUPLING STATS European Football Writer=

LONDON (SE) - Roberto Mancini takes Manchester City to Sunderland on Sunday looking for his team's tenth successive win over the Wearsiders and a place in the Premier League top four.

City are the bookmakers' favourites to pip Tottenham, Liverpool and Aston Villa for the last automatic Champions League place.

City have a match in hand on Tottenham and two on Liverpool but Mancini is aware how quickly things can change.

"In England every match is a difficult one. We have beaten Sunderland many times but they have some very good players and we must be careful."

City's last match was a 4-2 win at Chelsea which shocked the football world and served notice that the heavy spending in the last two years was close to paying off.

When City last played Sunderland at won 4-3 at Eastlands, it proved to be Mark Hughes' last match in charge and Mancini took over soon afterwards.

Under Mancini, City have lost four of their 16 league matches, a record which compares unfavourably with that of Hughes but the club are still handily placed.

Carlos Tevez, who scored twice at Chelsea, is likely to continue in attack alongside Craig Bellamy in the enforced absence of Emmanuel Adebayor who sits out a three-match ban.

Mancini will have Patrick Vieira available after suspension but Michael Johnson and Martin Petrov are still injured and Kolo Toure could return to the defence.

Sunderland manager Steve Bruce is much relieved after his team ended a 14-match run without a win when they beat Bolton 4-0 in midweek.

Darren Bent scored his first Premier League hat-trick to take his tally for the season to 19.

Bruce said: "I hope that win will give us a bit of confidence and enable us to finish off the season with a decent run of form. The fans have had a lot to suffer.

"It had been a long and difficult winter and there was a time when I felt our bad sequence of results might never end. But we kept plugging away.

"I want us to show a few people that we have some very good players at this club, players to compare with any in the league.

"Until this week we had not done ourselves justice but there is enough of the season left for us to climb to a respectable position."

Sunderland will be without Lorik Cana who sits out a two-match ban for reaching an unwanted milestone of ten yellow cards.

Bruce will also be deprived of Andy Reid, who has a hamstring injury, and three others \2013 Jordan Henderson, Lee Cattermole and Kieran Richardson \2013 will have late tests.

As a precaution, meanwhile, Sunderland's players have agreed to take a 40 per cent pay cut in the event of the club being relegated.

Sunderland reported a loss of 26 million pounds last year and the prospect of joining Portsmouth in financial chaos prompted a boardroom move to avert disaster.