Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Premier League match between Manchester City and Stoke City at the Etihad Stadium.

So many bodies in that Stoke half of the field. Silva tries a nice little pass, but comes off a Stoke foot before flying through to Begovic.

Cross from Dzeko, but ball drops straight out of play for a visiting goalkick that Begovic can knock long.

Adam doing wonderfully well to cut out the cross by Silva in the visiting box. Stoke can't get out at the moment.

Stoke happy to retreat. Or forced to retreat with City playing in front of them.

A blistering hit by Adam with his left foot. Plenty of venom in that effort, but ball whistles wide of a post with Hart beaten.

Dzeko rising in the City box, but he nods over the bar. Well over and wide in the end. Stoke forced to survive some early pressure here.

City settling into the type of possession they couldn't manage against Barcelona the other night. Fernandinho with a powerful shot, but tipped over by Begovic.

Jonathan Walters plays his 400th English league match – he is one goal short of scoring 75 goals in English league football.

Whelan invited to have a shot from distance. And he does. Plenty of power on the effort. But straight into the arms of Hart in the City goal.

Silva with a fine piece of skill. Smashes the cross into the middle, but Stoke bring it out courtesy of Walters.

We are off and running then in the first half of this contest.

City were passed to death by Barcelona in midweek but Stoke present a rather different kind of challenge. Will Pellegrini's men get back to goalscoring ways at home?

Mark Hughes comes here with a point to prove as always, having been sacked by City. However, that was under the comical reign of one Garry Cook, and not the rather more impressive Barcelona-flavoured regime that rules supreme at present. In retrospect, you'd have to say it was the right decision anyway.

Some stats via Opta: Man City have won all five Premier League home games versus Stoke without conceding a single goal, with four of the matches ending 3-0. Stoke have failed to score in six of their last 11 league games against Man City and just one goal in each of the other five. Mark Hughes was Manchester City manager between June 2008 and December 2009 winning 22 and losing 20 of his 55 games in charge.

John Terry has just scored an injury-time winner for Chelsea against Everton which means they will be going four clear at the top of the table! City will be six behind when they start their game at home to Stoke.

Mark Hughes: "They're able to go from one challenge to another and refocus very quickly. They've got a huge squad of great quality. The difficulty from my point of view is knowing who they're going to pick on the day. They've been absolutely outstanding at home and averaged a significant amount of goals as well, so it's a huge task... But we've had really positive results against the top teams this year."

Manuel Pellegrini: "It very important to win because it is the last Premier League game we are going to play in the Premier League for a while. I think it’s very important to continue trying to do what we can to arrive to the top of the table. The only way to continue is to win against Stoke here at home and for that, we must play a very good game. I expect that we are going to play against a difficult team tomorrow. It’s a good team with good players.”

The main news from the City team is that Martin Demichelis starts despite his horror show in the 2-0 defeat to Barcelona in midweek. Otherwise, Edin Dzeko and Samir Nasri come in for Gael Clichy and Jesus Navas.

TEAM NEWS: Man City: Hart, Zabaleta, Kompany, Demichelis, Kolarov, Fernandinho, Yaya Toure, Nasri, Silva, Dzeko, Negredo. Subs: Pantilimon, Lescott, Clichy, Garcia, Milner, Navas, Jovetic. /// Stoke: Begovic, Pieters, Wilson, Shawcross, Cameron, Arnautovic, Whelan, Adam, Odemwingie, Walters, Crouch. Subs: Sorensen, Muniesa, Palacios, Wilkinson, Nzonzi, Etherington, Ireland.