Pep Guardiola offered a restrained update on Erling Haaland after the striker appeared to be in clear discomfort following a collision with the woodwork at Villa Park. Haaland remained on the ground in visible pain but was able to finish the match and did not require a substitution.<\/p>\n
On the injury scare Guardiola said, “Hopefully he is fine.” The manager\u2019s short response left the club with a small window to manage the forward\u2019s recovery before a lighter fixture list.<\/p>\n
Man City\u2019s next match is against Swansea City in the Carabao Cup fourth round on Wednesday, Oct. 29. Guardiola should not need Haaland to make an appearance against the Championship side, giving the No. 9 additional time to recover. Haaland already has 24 goals to his name for both club and country this season, and the expectation is to have him fit for the visit of second-place Bournemouth to the Etihad on Sunday, Nov. 2.<\/p>\n
The defeat at Aston Villa ended a nine-game unbeaten run for the 10-time English champions and left City in fifth place, six points behind league-leaders Arsenal. Guardiola addressed the title race directly, saying: \u201cWe try to close [the gap],\u201d Guardiola said. \u201cArsenal have been solid for many years. The concern is how we improve better to be close.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my experience, it is so long. There are many teams there\u2014Bournemouth are doing really well\u2014and we try to do our game. Our job is not to watch the title. If [Arsenal] win all their games and win the Premier League, congratulate them. But I feel that the team is alive, it\u2019s good,\u201d Guardiola finished.<\/p>\n
With fixtures against Bournemouth and Liverpool coming in the next two weeks, Guardiola will be focused on restoring form and moving into the November international window with his squad in better shape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola gave a cautious update on Haaland after his collision; City target cup tie and recovery. .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1067,1056,172],"tags":[1066],"class_list":["post-4087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carabao-cup","category-man-city","category-epl","tag-carabao-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}