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Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola spoke about the team he will play against Brentford with one confirmed starter.
Pep Guardiola confirmed he will make plenty of changes to his Manchester City team for their Carabao Cup quarter-final with Brentford with more academy players coming in to train with the first team. The City manager won the competition four times in a row between 2018 and 2021 but is not sure he has the squad to go all the way this time with six players missing this week.
Rayan Ait-Nouri and Omar Marmoush have headed off to their national teams for African Cup of Nations duty, while Jeremy Doku will miss two or three weeks with a muscle injury he picked up last week. Those absences add to Rodri, John Stones and Mateo Kovacic, with none of the injured trio expected back in time for the Brentford game.
Guardiola was planning to make changes anyway, having barely rotated for the last three matches against Sunderland, Real Madrid, and Crystal Palace. His preference for using the early rounds of the Carabao Cup to use players on the fringes has continued this season, and that is likely to continue this week given the state of his squad.
Divine Mukasa has been training with the first team for most of the season and was on the bench at Palace for the injured Doku, while Reigan Heskey has worked with the group again in recent weeks and Kaden Braithwaite stepped up this week. Guardiola, who confirmed one starter in goalkeeper James Trafford, is prioritising the Premier League game with West Ham on Saturday as the Blues look to continue to take the charge to Arsenal.
"James is going to play and all the players who didn't play are going to play, plus some who played today and some from the academy. After that, in three days we have West Ham," he said. "I'm not saying that getting to the semi-finals of the League Cup is not the priority, but normally when we achieve it it is because we have all the squad, no injuries and we can rotate, the team is good.
"When you are one game away from the semi-finals in one competition, you can take it because you never know when it's going back. I have to find the balance but there are players with a lot of minutes and now we will travel and arrive late in Manchester with not much time to recover and with the physios and the doctors I have to see because the important game is West Ham. I'm sorry but West Ham is so, so important."
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