Guardiola hits back at Neville subs jibe
MANCHESTER City manager Pep Guardiola defended his decision to name only six substitutes in yesterday’s draw after TV pundit Gary Neville labelled the move a ‘joke’.
Guardiola insisted he had no more available first-teamers left to fill the bench at Turf Moor with seven players — David Silva, Benjamin Mendy, Fabian Delph, John Stones, Gabriel Jesus, Leroy Sane and Phil Foden — all injured.
‘We don’t have any more players,’ complained Guardiola. ‘I would like to have 18 players but they are injured. I could have called one of the second team but they played their match on Friday and they wouldn’t have got on the pitch ahead of Yaya [Toure] or [Oleksandr] Zinchenko so we decided not to use them.’
A critical Neville claimed Guardiola should have used the seventh vacant spot on the bench to blood a youngster.
‘I absolutely think it’s a joke,’ said the former Manchester United and England defender on Sky Sports. ‘If you are a youth team manager, ring him up and ask which kid deserves that boost. Who has been playing well, who has been working hard?’
However, two of the six subs named by Guardiola were youngsters, 18-year-old Brahim Diaz who came on for Raheem Sterling, and Tosin Adarabioyo, 20.
Guardiola is now giving his whole squad time off until Wednesday with their next match against Leicester not until Saturday. City have played 39 matches already this season and have complained about being ‘butchered’ by opponents with Sane suffering a bad ankle injury at Cardiff City last weekend.
Stones is the most likely of the missing players to return for the next game.
‘We will see how many players come back for Leicester,’ said Guardiola. ‘John had a bit of a problem in the knee and I prefer (him) to rest, to recover a bit. It was a little bit painful. I had Vincent [Kompany] come back against Burnley and Aymeric Laporte is already here but I decided not to use him today so he could recover and come back better against Leicester and Basle.’
Of the forthcoming rest, Guardiola said it wouldn’t be limited to the players. ‘I do it for myself as well,’ he said. ‘Everybody, physios, doctors, nobody in Manchester will work. We have until next Saturday to play, we have only had one other time since August with no midweek game.’