AGUERO TESTS CITY LIMITS
GUARDIOLA IN THE DARK AS CITY STRIKER BREAKS RIBS IN A CAR ACCIDENT
PEP GUARDIOLA was not aware that Sergio Aguero had travelled to the Netherlands on his day off, which ended with the Manchester City striker breaking his rib in a car accident.
Aguero will miss his side’s Premier League trip to Chelsea today after he was injured on his way home from a concert in Amsterdam on Thursday night when the taxi he was travelling in swerved and crashed into a lamppost.
The Argentine returned to Manchester yesterday to be assessed by City’s medical team amid fears that he could be unavailable for around six to eight weeks.
Speaking at his pre-match press conference, Guardiola admitted that, less than 48 hours before kick-off at Stamford Bridge, he did not know his striker was in another country.
“I only knew this morning when I woke up,” he said. “I don’t want to know what my players do.
“If they are fathers, they have a full responsibility on their shoulders on and off the pitch. They know what they have to do. I have a private life, a family. There are rules and ways to live between each other and that’s all.”
Guardiola repeatedly insisted he had no issue with Aguero travelling abroad so soon before an important match, claiming the striker was “strong enough” to endure such a quick turnaround.
LOSSES
The Catalan did, however, challenge the other members of City’s playing squad to act like “a big club” and overcome the losses of Aguero and Benjamin Mendy, who is unlikely to play again until April after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament.
“We want to become a big club,” said Guardiola. “I’ve been at two amazing clubs in my life, you have to overcome this situation. If we start to complain we’ll never reach the step we want to take.
“I prefer to play with men who are strong. I’d like to play with Sergio because we are strong with him, but he’s not there. No complaints.
“We’ll go there and play the way we’d have done it with Sergio, (injured captain Vincent) Kompany, Mendy. We have to overcome these situations if you want to become a team that others consider big and say it doesn’t matter what happens.
“The big clubs do it – they overcome the difficult situations. We’ve broken two pieces, how do we react? If people are saying we can’t do it now, we’ll never reach what we want in the next five or six years.”
While one of Guardiola’s numerous options in attack is likely to take Aguero’s place, with
Gabriel Jesus operating as a long striker, the City manager is short of replacements for Mendy.
Despite spending approximately £130m on fullbacks this summer, midfielder Fabian Delph slotted in for Mendy in the victory over Shakhtar Donetsk on Tuesday night.
Danilo, a £27m summer signing from Real Madrid, is City’s only remaining accomplished left wing-back and Guardiola admits Mendy, a popular figure on and off the pitch, is impossible to fully replace.
“In the way he plays, the way he goes up and down you can’t (replace him). We have to do it in a different way.
“Nobody in the world has his energy, his mood on the pitch, in the locker room. We have to try to replace – but we have other qualities in other players and we have to find a balance among the other ones.”