Pep Guardiola announced that Kevin De Bruyne and Aymeric Laporte will miss Manchester City’s away game against RB Leipzig due to illness.
Surprisingly, De Bruyne and Laporte did not travel with the City team for the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 match.
Yet after they arrived in Germany, Guardiola was able to confirm the nature of their issues.
The City boss was doubtful whether either of the players, who both started against Nottingham Forest on Saturday, would be available for this weekend’s match at Bournemouth due to recent sickness.
These absences will force Guardiola to make decisions about his starting lineup, albeit he had previously aroused some interest by selecting midfielder Bernardo Silva for the left back position.
Previously, that role was covered by Fabian Delph and Oleksandr Zinchenko, but Silva struggled against Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka and then seemed to be at fault for Forest’s equalizer on Saturday.
Guardiola said he was “not so stupid to think Bernardo is a full-back” as he explained his thought-process.
“People say we conceded the goal on the left side because Bernardo’s playing there, but people don’t realise – the view is like he’s a left-back who has to defend in that position,” he said.
“Bernardo helped us to do what we had done against Nottingham Forest. Without Bernardo, it was not possible to concede [only] one counter-attack and one or two actions at the end and [have] the amount of control of the game.”