Roque Santa Cruz and the whole City squad are giving manager Roberto Mancini plenty to think about in the build-up to Saturday’s mouth-watering Manchester derby.

With City looking to cement their place in the top four and United trying to close the gap on Chelsea, there’s even more at stake than just local bragging rights, and the Blues can boast a recent record of three straight wins and 14 goals scored.

The great form of Carlos Tevez and Emmanuel Adebayor has seen the Paraguayan wait for his turn off the bench. However the 28-year-old is adamant that no-one is resting on their laurels and that every player is pushing to get the nod for Saturday.

“Everybody wants to play in this game and in training everybody is trying to prove a point, trying to prove that they are the ones who should play on Saturday,” says Roque. “It’s interesting to see how everybody is in training in these last few weeks of the season with the situation we are in being so exciting.

Of course we’re pleased with all the results we’ve had over the last couple of weeks, but what’s good is that no-one in the squad is pretending that we have reached our best form yet.

Roque Santa Cruz

“There were some frustrating results a while ago, but we are going into this game with the confidence that we are playing well right now.  We can win this game by keeping working as hard as we have been in the last few games, and we’re very confident going into it.”

It’s the fourth derby week of the season, and Roque is doing his best to keep calm despite what is at stake for the Blues when kick-off comes around at 12.45pm on Saturday.

“It’s hardly a normal week, it’s such a massive game and there is so much that we are playing for. Even if we’re doing the same things in training, in our heads we know that we have to focus even more because of the game we have this weekend.”