Arya News - Manchester City will need to leave first-team players at home for their trip to face Everton on Saturday afternoon, Pep Guardiola has confirmed.The four-in-a-row Premier League champions head to Merse...
Manchester City will need to leave first-team players at home for their trip to face Everton on Saturday afternoon, Pep Guardiola has confirmed.
The four-in-a-row Premier League champions head to Merseyside for their final ever visit to Goodison Park as the Toffees’ prepare for a new life at a state-of-the-art venue built on Bramley-Moore Dock from next season.
The fixture no doubt has added importance for the hosts despite their place in next season’s Premier League almost confirmed, although Manchester City will be desperate for three points given their own precarious position in the table.
Pep Guardiola’s side find themselves battling away for a top-five place in the top-flight that would ensure them a spot in next season’s UEFA Champions League, after England earned an additional spot in the competition through their clubs’ performances in Europe.
And after an entire season that has brought complications on a fitness and injury front, the return of some players does not appear to have made life much easier for Pep Guardiola when it comes to his matchday squad selection for the clash with Everton.
“I don’t like a big squad and now one or two players cannot even travel to Goodison Park. That is terrible. It’s awful. It makes no sense for those players,” Guardiola revealed during his pre-match press conference on Friday afternoon.
The 54-year-old continued, “Not even go to the bench, stay at home. They go home and say, ‘What am I doing here?!’ They cannot do their job.”
Such an admission on the size of Manchester City’s squad raises further questions as to how the club will go about their transfer business this summer, with the common belief being that several changes will be made in terms of first-team personnel.
“The most important thing is to analyse who will be more reliable than the other ones,” Guardiola said. “This is important. The player can be reliable? Okay. We don’t need more.
“The players be like this season, like the previous seasons and play just 20% or 25%, he stays maybe we get another player for that position because he’s not reliable. I think that’s more than the quality because I have no doubts.”
The Manchester City coach continued, “You ask me how is the squad this season it’s exceptional. I don’t have any complaints about the club, I never have done, but it’s exceptional. But the problem is we didn’t have it.
“If you analysed with the players all fit – Rodri, John (Stones), Nathan (Ake), Manu (Manuel Akanji) and now Erling (Haaland) six weeks out, all of them are fit the team is exceptional. But unfortunately during the season we didn’t have that.
“The question is next season. If we have the players that they are not reliable and they want to stay here we will have to make a longer squad. That’s the balance we have to find talking and talking and talking.”
Pep Guardiola and his players come into this weekend’s contest in fifth position in the Premier League table, with a win potentially moving them up into the top-four depending on Nottingham Forest’s clash away to Tottenham in North London on Monday night.