Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
PEP’S IN A FIX
Guardiola blasts the fixture chaos that led to De Bruyne injury and forces him to shuffle his pack for a match he can’t afford to lose
PEP GUARDIOLA has hit out at the crazy fixture schedule that has led to Kevin De Bruyne’s latest injury setback.
The Manchester City playmaker is out of today’s clash against Arsenal with a muscular problem.
De Bruyne suffered the injury towards the end of Belgium’s 2-1 Nations League defeat to England at Wembley and could miss several more games.
Guardiol a sai d De Bruyne had reached his limit aft er just eight days off in preseason and blamed the overloaded calendar for the loss of his most influential player.
“I think it’s not big, I don’t know how long, but it’s a few days and I don’t know how many games he’ll be out,” said City boss Guardiola.
“He had no preseason and he had just eight days off. His wife was pregnant, so he had to be at home.
“He could not go on holiday, so he rested and trained h ere and pl ayed really well as always, but at the end the boy has a limit and he gets injured.”
With De Bruyne and Gabriel Jesus out and Sergio Aguero not ready to start after f o u r mont h s o u t , Guardiola will be forced to shuffle his personnel for the visit of his former assistant Mikel Arteta’s side.
That could see Raheem Sterling, Phil Foden or Bernardo Silva deployed as a ‘false nine’, in a game in which City can ill-afford to drop further points.
After their 5-2 defeat at home to Leicester and a 1-1 draw at Leeds, City need to get back to winning ways in this already turbulent season.
Guardiola admitted this season could witness the most open title race for years, given the freak results already and the unique circumstances brought about by the pandemic, in particular the absence of fans.
“Three years ago there was just one in the title race, it was us,” said Guardiola (right).
“Then it was just Liverpool and us, then last year just Liverpool so, yeah, we’ll see.
“We came back after the pandemic and it was hard to finish the Premier League season and the Champions League and now it’s 11 months in this situation.
“I don’t know what impact this situation – without spectators – will have. For a short time it’s nice, for a long time it’s different.
“I don’t know if this is the reason for these (surprising ) results, but maybe a little part of this must be.
“I don’t know if it will change the way they approach the games, but for a short time you can do it, but over 11 months – I don’t know what’s going to happen.
“Maybe there’ll be more contenders, if there are no long unbeaten runs with teams winning 16, 17 or 18 games in a row, like it was before in the Premier League
“Ev e r y o n e c a n beat everyone, which is not what happened in the last three seasons.”