Gianluigi Buffon pricks pride of beleaguered Juventus

Manchester - Juventus skipper Gianluigi Buffon has encouraged his team-mates to put their dismal start to the domestic season behind them in Tuesday's Champions League opener away to Manchester City.

Juventus reached last season's Champions League final, losing 3-1 to Barcelona in Berlin, but are in a sorry state in Serie A after losing two and drawing one of their opening three matches.

Massimiliano Allegri's side are struggling to adapt to life without Andrea Pirlo, Arturo Vidal and Carlos Tevez, despite having welcomed a glut of new players to the club during the close season, but Buffon says it is too early to jump to conclusions about what they might achieve.

"The period is what it is. There's no point wringing our hands over this. It'll irritate me if we keep bemoaning our lot," he told Monday's pre-game media conference at the Etihad Stadium.

"In sport, in life, you have to show pride. It's of fundamental importance, particularly when you know you're a strong team, a team that has a good future ahead of you.

"We can't be happy with what's happened, but by the same token, we can't afford to feel sorry for ourselves."

Juventus have won the Italian title for four years in a row, cantering home by an average margin of 11.75 points, and Buffon, 37, believes that complacency may have played a role in their early-season problems.

"The error we recognise as a group is that we are used to winning pretty easily, so perhaps we've taken certain things for granted," added the Italy goalkeeper, who has never won the Champions League.

"We won the Italian Super Cup (against Lazio), so maybe we thought it would be plain sailing again if we did what we'd done in the past."

City have won all five of their Premier League games to date this season and Buffon considers them "potential winners" of the Champions League, despite the fact they have never previously gone beyond the round of 16.

He also played down the significance of City talisman Sergio Aguero's unavailability due to a knee injury.

"There's no doubt City have seven or eight attacking players who can play in the top five teams in Europe," said Buffon, whose side will also face Sevilla and Borussia Moenchengladbach in Group D.

"Our good fortune is that they probably won't play more than three tomorrow.

"It's true that at certain moments you might think it's a bit of a shame, almost a waste, not to see all these players at the same time."