Jose Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, said his team will play to win at the Etihad Stadium tonight, and not simply to stifle Manchester City on their own turf.
Chelsea beat City 2-1 at Stamford Bridge in October when goalkeeper Joe Hart allowed Fernando Torres to score a last-gasp winner, and have also beaten Manchester United and Liverpool at home.
On the road, Mourinho's team have adopted a conservative approach, with goalless draws at Manchester United and Arsenal, and a 1-1 draw at Tottenham Hotspur.
Manchester City have scored 42 goals in winning their 11 home games this season, and the Chelsea manager says a defensive approach will not be enough to halt Manuel Pellegrini's team.
"City score goals," Mourinho said. "Normally, when your approach is very defensive, if you concede a goal you are in trouble. Or [if] you have to make changes during the game you never know how the players adapt to it. It's not because of one game against certain opponents that we are going to change our philosophy. We are going to try to win, knowing perfectly we can lose or draw. Our intention is to try to win."
He added: "Our objective is to finish in a Champions League spot. That's the competitive objective. The greater objective is the improvement of the team and preparing the team for the future."
In all competitions this season, of the visitors to the Etihad Stadium only European champions Bayern Munich have not been beaten, but Pellegrini has said he does not expect his side to dwell on their record.
"For us it is very important to think that it's a new game and we don't know if we are going to score a goal, and we are not just thinking of scoring goals," he said. "In football, all that has happened in the past is not important.
"Maybe one team can be feared, another team cannot be feared. One can come here just to defend, another team will think it is better to attack.
"It is very important not to think about the past. To do it again we must repeat exactly the way we are playing here at the Etihad."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article