TODAY we will find out if Manuel Pellegrini follows through on his implied threat of fielding an under-strength Manchester City for their visit to Chelsea. If he does, don’t blame him.

He may be a lame duck manager, but he understandably wants to exit with silverware. And the simple fact is that, in the Premier League, City are six points back with 12 games to go, hardly an abyss of a gap. Not when the clubs ahead of them – Leicester City, Tottenham and Arsenal – haven’t exactly been models of consistency.

There’s also the League Cup final in a week. And, most of all, Wednesday night’s clash with Dynamo Kiev in the Champions League.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the FA Cup ranks fourth in that list of priorities. With City travelling to the Ukraine tomorrow, shoe- horning in this match today, less than 24 hours earlier, seems mad. Pellegrini pointed out, logically, the game ought to have been played yesterday.

But no. Due to the convoluted nature of how fixtures are decided, the lack of co-operation between the Football Association, broadcasters and the Football League, and the police’s inability to handle two games on the same day in grounds a mile apart, yesterday was a no go.

Chelsea v Manchester City pits the last two Premier League champions and is the pick of the FA Cup fifth round. Logic would have dictated making it a televised game yesterday. All you had to do was swap it with the Bournemouth v Everton game, also on the BBC, so the two sides could be as close to full-strength as possible. But no. Fulham were playing Charlton Athletic yesterday at Craven Cottage and evidently a game between two bad second-tier sides takes precedence.

Why couldn’t Fulham v Charlton, given the exceptional circumstances, have been switched to Friday night? (Playing today was not possible because both have fixtures on Tuesday.) And, if fans are unhappy – though you wonder how unhappy they could be as the two clubs are only a tube ride apart – sell the rights as a one-off and use the revenue to subsidise future tickets or away travel. Done.

Except, of course, that would have required common sense and some level of co-ordination. Two things that remain absent from the English game.

ON Friday, Fifa are due to elect a new president. You have to be cautious about this, because if a week is a long time in politics, these days, it’s an even longer time in football politics.

US law enforcement love announcing indictments on the eve of Fifa elections and executive committee meetings (and, when it’s not them, it’s the Swiss authorities). Benny Alon, the ticket broker who last year accused Jerome Valcke, the former secretary general, of soliciting a bribe, is promising another press conference on the eve of the vote, with more explosive revelations.

As recently as last week, there was speculation that Sepp Blatter, who is currently suspended, might gate-crash proceedings since he didn’t actually resign, but rather “laid down his mandate”. It’s a technical term whereby his resignation only takes effect once the Congress has approved it, and since that hasn’t happened yet, he’s still president. A president under suspension of course, because of the whole “disloyal payment” to Michel Platini affair, but a president nonetheless.

Mercifully, those close to him insist that won’t happen. But you still feel as if you can’t rule out anything in Fifa world.

Who’s going to win? Conventional wisdom among Fifa watchers suggests it is a two-horse race between Gianni Infantino, the Uefa general secretary, and Sheikh Salman, the Bahraini president of the Asian Football Confederation.

Infantino appears to have the support of most of Europe, South America and a chunk of Concacaf. Salman is backed by most of Asia and Africa. Playing the role of spoiler is Jordan’s Prince Ali, who has a smattering of endorsements from around the world, possibly enough, if things don’t go his way in the multi-round vote, to direct his support to one of the big two. The other two – Jerome Champagne, a former Fifa deputy secretary general, and Tokyo Sexwale, a South African millionaire and anti-apartheid campaigner who was Blatter’s poster boy in the fight against racism – appear to be along for the ride.

The ugly truth about Fifa elections is that a certain portion of voters simply choose whoever they think will win. (This is why voters have been banned from taking smartphones into the ballot booth. Yes, the fear was that they would take a picture of their ballot to prove their loyalty.) That may explain the uber-confidence spewing from the Infantino and Salman camps last week.

The former were rattling off a constant stream of newfound endorsements, while the latter were suggesting he was so confident that he had actually stopped campaigning and was “relaxing” in Zurich. Because, of course, that’s where people go to “relax”.

It’s just another layer of absurdity in the whole exercise. Expect a few more between now and Friday’s vote. If we ever actually get to Friday’s vote.

THOSE who seem to revel in schadenfreude when it comes to Pep Guardiola are usually the same ones who won’t hesitate to call his time at Bayern a “failure” if he doesn’t win the Champions’ League.

They may have been chuckling to themselves over the past few weeks as news of Bayern’s defensive injury crisis mounted. Jerome Boateng, arguably Bayern’s best centre-back, is out. So too are Holger Badstuber, Medhi Benatia and Javi Martinez, who is more of a midfielder but has successfully deputised there before. It’s not a good look ahead of Tuesday’s clash with Juventus, who last year came within 90 minutes of winning a European Treble.

Guardiola’s solution in recent games has been to take a 5ft 9in 21-year-old midfielder in his first Bundesliga season (Joshua Kimmich) and put him alongside a 5ft 7in right-back (Philipp Lahm) and a 5ft 11in left-back (David Alaba).

Against Juve, he may throw Xabi Alonso, a midfielder, into the mix.

If Bayern get knocked out, his critics will sneer and his boosters will point to the mitigating factors. If they advance, you almost feel as if he purposely made life more difficult for himself, just because he got bored of winning.