Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola says that he has no choice other than to accept the injury status of his squad amid a heavy schedule which he compared to the one of the NBA.
This comes following City’s first defeat of the Premier League season, a 2-1 loss at Bournemouth on Saturday, which came days after the club crashed out of the Carabao Cup at Tottenham Hotspur.
City’s season is scheduled to run until FIFA’s inaugural Club World Cup, planned for June and July 2025 in the United States, with games continuing to come thick and fast until then – City travel to face Sporting CP in Lisbon in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Against Bournemouth, City had to play Nathan Ake, who is not fully fit as he recovers from injury, among other players who were lacking match fitness, while even more missed out on the encounter altogether.
“In the past, the previous seasons, we played a lot of games, maybe when we go to the World [Club] Cup, arriving at the last stages of the competition, we’re going to play more than 70 games,” Guardiola said after the Bournemouth match.
He added, ”And 70 games is like the NBA, but the NBA has four-month holidays and we have three weeks, because it’s not this season, it comes from the previous season, the previous season, the previous season. When that happens, you have injuries for a long time.”
Speaking on the injured players, Guardiola lamented, “There are players that are not in the best way and they make an incredible effort to be here. So Manu [Akanji] and Nathan [Ake] were not in really good condition, so until the last moment I didn’t know Nathan could play and he says: ‘No, I want to try, I want to try’.”