City just short of experience says Hughes

With the loss of Martin Petrov to what could prove to be a long term knee injury, Mark Hughes has been left to rue a certain lack of Premier League experience within his squad, but that could soon be boosted by the return of two key players.

Reflecting on being without the Bulgarian winger, Hughes told mcfc.co.uk: “He gives us experience as well and we’ve lost a number of senior players through injuries.

“The likes of Darius Vassell and Benjani as well and these players would help us at this moment in time. I keep saying it but we’re a young side and that is true.

“Sometimes you need that experience and understanding of the game and the knowledge of playing Premier League games week in, week out.

“We’re just lacking a little bit of that at the moment, so we hope Martin’s going to be okay and back quite quickly, but at the moment it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case.”

After failing to see out games in which they’ve lead recently, the Blues boss feels that his side slightly lack that little something to kill off matches when they get into a winning position.

He admitted: “We’ve got a lot of guys that are new to the Premier League, a lot of young guys anyway, in terms of years.

“It takes time to adjust to the Premier League and it’s an exceptional league, very strong and very physical.

“You need experience and an understanding of what it’s all about and at the moment we just lack a bit of the experience that would help us.”

And City could soon call on two such players with the necessary experience in Benjani and Darius Vassell as Hughes revealed: “Benji joined in with the reserves this week and it went well so he’s fairly close to joining in with the first team squad again.

“That will help us and it’ll be a real boost because we’ve missed his presence and it’ll be great to be able to get him back on the field of play again.

“He’s trained well on his own and has been with the physios for quite some time so fitness wise he’s okay. He probably does need the match time but we’ll be looking to give him that very quickly.

“Darius is about a week behind Benjani so this time next week we’d like to think that we could start to introduce him into group sessions and then it’ll be a week after that he’ll be back with the first team.”

And as for Michael Johnson, who is still suffering with an abdominal problem, Hughes concluded: “We’re still working with Michael and he’s still getting that discomfort, but we’ll get to the bottom of it, it’s just taking a little bit longer than we thought. He won’t be fit for this weekend.”