City claim comfortable cushion

First-half goals from Felipe Caicedo and Shaun Wright-Phillips proved enough to give Manchester City a healthy 2-0 lead to take into the second-leg of their UEFA Cup tie with Aalborg next week.

Aiming to reach the quarter-finals for the first time in 30 years, the Blues were deserved winners and really should have grabbed a bigger lead for the trip to Denmark.

But two should be enough after Caicedo gave them an eighth-minute lead before Wright-Phillips rocketed home a classy second on the half hour.

With record signing Robinho back from an ankle injury, manager Mark Hughes had a joyous array of attacking weapons at his disposal, especially as in the absence of Vincent Kompany and Nigel de Jong, the Blues had more playmakers in the centre of the park than would normally be the case.

The contest was only eight minutes old when Caicedo opened their account. The Ecuador striker has twice been tipped to leave City after failing to make much of an impact since arriving halfway through Sven-Goran Eriksson's brief reign.

But there was certainly nothing shabby about his finish after he had collected Robinho's square ball and held off Michael Jakobsen before beating Karim Zaza.

If Caicedo is a relative newcomer in first-team circles, Wright-Phillips has been around for a long time.

Aalborg struggled to contain the England star from the first whistle and when Stephen Ireland provided the killer pass, Wright-Phillips left Patrick Kristensen for dead before beating Zaza with an almost languid strike that nevertheless had too much power to be prevented from ending up in the top corner.

Elano's influence grew in the second half and the former Shakhtar Donetsk man provided Wright-Phillips with an excellent shooting opportunity when he split the Aalborg defence, only for the chance to be wasted as the winger fired wide.

Aalborg did manage one final flurry, during which Kasper Risgard floated a free-kick over and Lucas Caca screwed a decent opportunity badly wide. But a goal at that stage would have been an injustice as City sense a place in the last eight.