City up and running with easy win

Manchester City began their pre-season campaign with a 3-0 victory over the Portland Timbers on Saturday evening in the United States. Roberto Mancini named almost entirely different sides for the two 45 minutes in Oregon - only Greg Cunningham stayed on after the break - with Joe Hart starting his first City game in over a year.Steven Ireland scored from a Michael Johnson cross a minute before half-time to give the Premier League outfit the league and Emmanuel Adebayor headed in a second shortly after to make it 2-0 at the break.Jo rattled in a third in the 68th minute to earn City a comfortable victory ahead of Friday's tougher test against Sporting Lisbon in New York.Mancini was simply happy to see his key players come through the game unscathed."The main thing is that we came through without any serious injuries and that is important," he told the official website."I am sure the players were glad to get into action after two weeks of hard work and I thought we did well against a side that is progressing in the United States and which was well prepared and fought hard all night."It was good for the young players to show what they could do. We used the defensive ones in the first half and the midfielders and strikers in the second half."This was only a first step but a big one on the way to the start of the Premier League season."Starting XI: Hart, Trippier, Boyata, Mee, Cunningham, Ireland, Zabaleta, A Johnson, Vieira, Bellamy, Adebayor.Second Half - Taylor, Richards, Kompany, Lescott, Cunningham (Bridge), Tutte, Kay (Onuoha), Ibrahim, Helan, Guidetti (Tchuimeni-Nimely), Jo.

Source: Team_Talk