Manchester City face uncertainty in defence ahead of their Champions League meeting with Real Madrid after Pep Guardiola confirmed John Stones was omitted from the weekend line-up because of injury.<\/p>\n
Stones has not been a regular starter in the Premier League this season, with Guardiola generally preferring the pairing of R\u00faben Dias and Jo\u0161ko Gvardiol at centre back. He remains an important member of the squad and has usually started Champions League fixtures instead. He even captained City in the defeat to Bayer Leverkusen on matchday five.<\/p>\n
City sit ninth in the Premier League and require a positive result in Madrid to strengthen their claim for a top-eight league phase finish. Guardiola revealed after the Sunderland game that Stones\u2019 absence was injury-related but provided no timescale for his return. “To be honest, I don\u2019t know,” was the manager\u2019s response when asked to provide a timeframe.<\/p>\n
Sunderland was only the second match Stones has missed this season through injury, after he was also ruled out of September\u2019s Manchester derby. The former Everton player missed large portions of last season with foot and hamstring problems and has not been fit for an entire campaign since 2020\u201321.<\/p>\n
Stones has spoken openly in recent months about the mental toll injuries have taken on him. Addressing that struggle during the summer\u2019s FIFA Club World Cup, he said: “It\u2019s difficult when you’re injured,” he told reporters during the summer\u2019s FIFA Club World Cup . “There\u2019s been points where you think, you\u2019ve been giving all this effort, you dedicate all your life, especially how I approach or go about my life, and football, I give everything, on and off the pitch to be here or be ready to play games and those are the dark days.” <\/p>\n
In October he told BBC Radio 5 Live he had considered stepping away from the sport: “Last season was tough for me, to the point where I thought about stopping,” he said “I didn\u2019t want to [continue]. I\u2019d had enough of being so professional and trying to do everything right in my power, to then keep breaking down and not having the answers. It was a very difficult place to be in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John Stones is absent through injury ahead of Manchester City’s Champions League trip to Real Madrid….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,969],"tags":[1304,1006,1047],"class_list":["post-4962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-premier-league","tag-benching","tag-captaincy","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4962","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=4962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}