MANCHESTER -- Manuel Pellegrini is weighing up whether to give Wilfried Bony a full debut for Manchester City on Saturday and feels it will be easy for his new signing to settle in at the Etihad Stadium.
Striker Bony sealed a 28 million-pound move from Swansea on Jan. 14 but is only available to make his first City appearance 38 days later after helping Ivory Coast win the African Nations Cup, and is now in contention to face Newcastle.
"I think that Bony will be an important player for us," Pellegrini said in a news conference. "He will be in the squad list. We will see if he will be in the starting 11 or have some minutes [on the pitch] after that but he works with our team the whole week without any problems."
Bony spent 18 months at Swansea, delivering 34 goals in 70 games and was the Premier League's top scorer in the calendar year of 2014.
And that gives Pellegrini confidence he will make an immediate impact at City as he argued Bony can form a fine strike partnership with any of Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko, Stevan Jovetic or David Silva.
He added: "I think it will be easy for him to settle in a good way. He is a player that plays here in England, he knows the Premier League and he knows our team.
"He can play with Aguero, he can play with Dzeko, he can play with Jovetic, he can play with Silva. He can play with all the players in our team."
Yaya Toure is also available again after he skippered Ivory Coast to victory in the African Nations Cup.
"Yaya is always an important player for us," Pellegrini added. "It is also important for him and Bony to come back winning the Africa Cup. I suppose they enjoy it because they won titles. That is the most important thing."
City only tasted victory once in Toure's absence but Pellegrini believes their poor run was a consequence of various factors.
He explained: "We didn't win a lot of games without him but that is not the only problem. In that same moment, our strikers were coming back from long injuries. Both things together maybe were too much for our team but we don't depend just on one player."