Pep Guardiola delivered a pre-match press conference on Friday afternoon ahead of Sunday’s Community Shield.
As we have become accustomed to, the presser was low on concrete injury updates but the Manchester City boss was fairly upbeat-sounding ahead of the clash with Liverpool.
🗣️ Pep Guardiola ahead of the Community Shield: “Except Fernandinho, everybody is back. Today arrived the last two, Ederson and Riyad. Arrived two days ago, Sergio and Gabriel.”#FFScout #FPL #MCFC #FantasyPL #FPLCommunity
— Fantasy Football Scout (@FFScout) August 2, 2019
There is more than one way to interpret Guardiola’s comments, of course, and it may well be that he was referring exclusively to his group of players who have been representing their countries at the Copa America or Africa Cup of Nations.
Manchester City correspondent Sam Lee reported on Thursday that Aymeric Laporte (£6.5m) was a doubt for the Community Shield with a knock, so it remains to be seen if the centre-half has shrugged off that minor issue to line up at Wembley.
The likes of Sergio Aguero (£12.0m), Gabriel Jesus (£9.5m), Riyad Mahrez (£8.5m) and Ederson (£6.0m) were namechecked in Guardiola’s comments and would seem set to be involved in the matchday squad.
However, Guardiola went on to suggest that the players who have already featured heavily in pre-season would again get the nod to start on Sunday.
🗣️ Guardiola: “We are going to try to play with the players that played more minutes in this pre-season. The guys who came back later like these names I said before… maybe they have a few minutes.”#FFScout #FPL #MCFC #FantasyPL #FPLCommunity
— Fantasy Football Scout (@FFScout) August 2, 2019
Claudio Bravo (£5.0m) is set to start in goal after having played all 360 minutes of City’s four pre-season games so far.
🗣️ Guardiola on Claudio Bravo: “Really impressed. One year out, he came back and played all minutes of pre-season. The day after tomorrow, he is going to play [in the Community Shield].”#FFScout #FPL #MCFC #FantasyPL #FPLCommunity
— Fantasy Football Scout (@FFScout) August 2, 2019
4 years, 8 months agoI see I'm needed again:
I'm back to tell you all categorically that Leicester are not buying Lewis Dunk for £40 million when we spent £30 million on long term Maguire replacements last summer in Soyuncu and Benkovic. It's the club's plan, it's fairly obvious. Or you can keep believing the Sun...