Juventus have promised to clamp down on any fans who racially abuse Mario Balotelli when they meet Manchester City in the Europa League (City 11/2 – Europa League outright).

The 20-year-old striker joined the Eastlands club from Inter Milan this summer for a fee thought to be in the region of £24m, as City continue to build a squad capable of breaking the duopoly at the top of the Premier League.

They now have a squad that appears, on paper, to be the match of the majority of the top European teams, and will hope to progress to the latter stages of the Europa league this term.

Racism in English football seems to be, by and large, a thing of the past, with the days when bananas were thrown onto the pitch and ‘monkey chants’ heard in the stands resigned to history, but a few European teams still have a problem with a minority of supporters.

Balotelli was subjected to racist chants when Inter played Juventus at the Olympic Stadium last season and the club’s chief executive, Jean-Claude Blanc, hopes that there will be no repeat performance this time around.

“This will be the chance for the supporters to demonstrate that the standard has been raised,” he said. “Hopefully fans will behave the way they should be behaving and supporting the team and only this.

“Supporting your team is to support your team, and not to make remarks of a racist nature toward other players. We will be extremely demanding and intransigent about this.”

City will be confident of progressing to the knock-out stage of Europe’s second tier competition as they have been grouped with Austrian outfit Salzburg and Polish side Lech Poznan, as well as Juve, who will provide the toughest challenge for Roberto Manicin’s men.

City fans are desperate for some silverware and would love to win the Europa League but reports suggest that Mancini’s number one priority this season is to get the club into next year’s Champions League with a top-four finish in the Premier League (Barcelona 13/5 – Champions League outright).

They signalled their intent with a crushing 3-0 victory over Liverpool on Monday night and have amassed enough quality players over the past two years to cover injuries that are bound to occur throughout the long season.

With Liverpool under new management and Arsenal looking in good form, the race for the Premier League could be as open as it has been for years, with the new ‘top five’ likely to take points off each other throughout the campaign (City 13/2 – Premier League outright).

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