Evening all and welcome to Manchester City v Club Brugge!

Lots of empty seats at the Eithad, which tells you the tickets are too expensive. Clubs should be fined for that, because they should be round schools on the day of the game giving them out for nowt.

Away we go.

Both teams take the knee. Played lads.

Excuse me, I had to procure myself a Lemsip. Rock n' roll round mine, I can tell you.

Here come the teams...

Brugge have, however, reached as many European Cup finals as City.

Some stats for you: City have won 80% of their Champions League home games under Guardiola, winning 20, drawing two and losing three. Of coaches who've been in charge for more than 20 games, this is the highest win percentage, while Brugge have never won away to an English side.

Asked if he's had a difficult week, Guardiola makes out like he doesn't know what's going on. It's extremely unconvincing, rather like his black roll-neck. He denies that he's resting players for the weekend, saying each game is equally important, and again, he's not exactly believable.

I agree with Rio I must say: the lack of needle between the current top managers is disappointing. It's much more fun when football's personal.

Michael Owen's rig though.

Not germane to our match, but still worth a look-in:

It's mad to think that City would've let Bernardo leave this summer. He's a terrific player - a better one than Grealish, in mine - and it would've made much more sense not to bother buying the latter in order to get a centre-forward, though it looks like Hazza Kane might've been a bad choice.

City currently sit second in the group on six points; Paris are top with seven, Brugge third with four, and Leipzig bottom with nowt.

Back to Stones, he needs to play tonight because he'll be playing the next two league games given Laporte's suspension. The first of those is the Manchester derby, a game that could finish 6-6 so will probably finish 0-0.

That said, he does go on to say that to be considered one of the best teams in Premier League history, City need to do something proper in Europe, and I agree. Currently, only two English teams have won the domestic and continental title in the same season, and those are also the only two teams to have won three league titles in a row: Man United 99-01 and 07-09.

Kyle Walker is telling BT about getting to the final and making history for City, but seriously, they've had more money spent on them than any other team in football history - their Champions League record is a disgrace.

Elsewhere, Real Madrid are 2-0 up on Shakhtar with seven minutes to go. Follow along with that here:

I should also note that Stones makes his first Champions League start of the season. I'm going to be real with you: I don't think he's all that. He's nice enough on the ball, but the list of top-class, elite-level, unathletic centre-backs is very short - arguably, it comprises F. Baresi and no one else. It can work with City because they have so much of the ball, but any proper striker would fancy getting him one on one.