Pep’s Blue gloom against Canaries

PEP Guardiola revealed Kevin de Bruyne started on the bench against Norwich to ensure his fitness ahead of a challenging schedule.

The midfielder has started the season in incredible fashion for City, having already notched up five assists and a goal in just four Premier League games, after spending much of last season out on the sidelines.

He also played most of Belgium’s two EURO 2020 qualifier’s during the international break.

As a result, and with the season truly starting to get busy with the Champions League and Carabao Cup participation beginning, Guardiola opted to rest De Bruyne and started Ilkay Gundogan in his place.

The Belgian came on in the second half with the Blues 3-1 down, but couldn’t turn things around as they lost their first game of the season.

“I trust a lot with Gundogan. Gundogan is an incredible important player for us,” Guardiola said.

“And we start the part of the season where everybody - not everybody because always there are players who don’t play too much but important players they have to play and they cannot play the same level during 10 or 11 months.

“Kevin he was incredible pre-season, he was incredible in pre-season, but he played two games in the national team and my experience says that, for example Pjanic Juventus is injured, Modric Madrid is injured, and what happened last season with Kevin I’d prefer 20, 25 minutes in the second half at an incredible level.

“In three, four games we have a tough game, a long trip to Ukraine in the Champions League then just three days after the Watford game, and everybody has to play that.”

Meanwhile, Guardiola said the Blues lacked urgency

“Congrats to Norwich. The first goal was from a set-piece and the second on the counter so credit to them.

“It is what it is. We have to learn from this and carry on. “Our passing was not bad. “We created chances but we could not score them today.

“They are a really good team with good players with quality, we saw that in the Championship last year, they were clinical today.

“We did not have urgency in the final third that we normally have. In football you can’t always avoid mistakes. “I don’t know how many shots we had or how many they had, but football is about goals and about what you do in the boxes.”

They are a really good team with good players with quality. We saw that in the Championship