City facing Tuesday afternoon Europa tie

Manchester City will be “Tuesday afternoon – Channel Five” for their Europa League campaign.

Both City and Manchester United are top seeds for the last-32 round of the secondary competition after their shock Champions League exits.

But UEFA rules mean that no city can host two games on the same day, with United given first option on dates due to their status as defending Premier League champions.

The Old Trafford side will take the Thursday night games because they are concerned at filling Old Trafford for a 5pm kick-off for the second leg of their clash, with the opponents decided by this morning’s draw in Nyon.

And that leaves City facing the Tuesday afternoon kick-off on the minority channel – much to the delight of rival fans keen to mock Roberto Mancini’s men over their reduced role in Europe.

As exclusively reported in the Mirror, Chelsea defender Ashley Cole had taunted Mancini and his players by shouting “Thursday night, Channel Five” after the west London side beat Manchester City on Monday night.

Chelsea’s fans had also been mocking City with the chant during the game at Stamford Bridge. But it looks as if City will be playing their games on Tuesday at 5pm – not Thursday. The only change to that would be if City opt to give up the advantage of playing their second leg at home.

If so, they would revert to the Thursday night list, forcing changes in the Premier League fixture list.

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There will be 32 teams in the hat for the Europa League draw:

PAOK Salonika (Greece)

Rubin Kazan (Russia)

Standard Liege (Belgium)

Hannover 96 (Germany)

PSV Eindhoven (Holland)

Legia Warsaw (Poland)

Sporting Lisbon (Portugal)

Lazio (Italy)

Besiktas (Turkey)

STOKE CITY

Athletic Bilbao (Spain)

SV Salzburg (Austria)

FC Metalist Kharkiv (Ukraine)

AZ Alkmaar (Holland)

Bruges (Belgium)

Braga (Portugal)

Atletico Madrid (Spain)

Udinese (Italy)

Schalke 04 (Germany)

Steaua Bucharest (Romania)

FC Twente (Holland)

Wisla Krakow (Poland)

Anderlecht (Belgium)

Lokomotiv Moscow (Russia)

From Champions League's non-qualifiers:

MANCHESTER CITY

Trabzonspor

MANCHESTER UNITED

Ajax

Valencia

Olympiacos

Porto

Viktoria Plzen

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