It’s that day of the week when Manchester United fans don’t have a lot to do. Given that we’re in the Champions League, and have been every single season since 1994, our midweek football is out of the way by Wednesday at the latest.

So, with not much else to talk about, we’ll cast an eye over football played in the lesser European competition, the Europa League.

After losing their last two league games on the bounce, Manchester City were hoping for a change of fortune against Lech Poznań. The Polish side are currently 14th out of 16 in the poor Polish league, having lost half the games they’ve played this season.

Roberto Mancini (who is currently two points worse off than Mark Hughes was this time last season, 7 matches before the club sacked him) decided to play a weaker side away in Europe, although, you would have to argue every player on City’s team was better than every player for their opponents. On paper.

Shay Given (£5.9m), Micah Richards, Wayne Bridge (£10m), Pablo Zabaleta (£6.45m), Joleon Lescott (£24m), Dedryck Boyata, James Milner (£26 million), Shaun Wright-Phillips (£8.5m), Adam Johnson (£6m), Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Adebayor (£25m) were in the starting team, with Vincent Kompany (£6m) and David Silva (£25m) coming off the bench, at a total cost of £143m.

Still, that didn’t stop them from slumping to a 3-1 defeat.

With a difficult trip to West Brom to come this week, you have to wonder what shape they will be in by derby day…