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.”