Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has set a strict rule for his squad over the Christmas break, warning that any player who returns overweight will be omitted from his selection.<\/p>\n
Guardiola made clear he would police the festive period personally and that fitness on return would determine involvement for the fixture against Nottingham Forest. \u201cThe players asked me to take a day off. I said, \u2018No because you didn\u2019t play good enough.\u2019\u201d he said, explaining his approach to downtime and preparation.<\/p>\n
He outlined the schedule he expects players to follow: \u201cSo Sunday recovery, train the guys that didn\u2019t play, and after three days off they have two days to prepare for Nottingham Forest.\u201d That compressed timeline leaves little margin for indulgence, Guardiola suggested.<\/p>\n
On the matter of body weight he was equally blunt. \u201cEvery player makes a weight,\u201d he insisted. \u201cThey come back on the 25th and I will be there controlling how many kilos come up, [to see if] they come fatty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moment they arrive after three days I want to see how they come back. They can eat but I want to control them. I have to make a selection for [December] 27 against Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine one player and now he\u2019s perfect but he will arrive with three kilos more. He will [stay] in Manchester. He will not travel to Nottingham Forest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola\u2019s stance comes as City chase the Premier League title and have closed the gap on leaders Arsenal from seven points to two. The manager\u2019s measures are framed as part of a broader push to regain momentum and apply pressure on rivals.<\/p>\n
Arsenal counterpart Mikel Arteta is refusing to look at City\u2019s resurgence in an attempt to keep his focus on his own side, but Guardiola said he hopes to make enough noise to force a reaction from his former prot\u00e9g\u00e9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola will weigh his squad after Christmas; overweight players face omission for Forest. at risk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1056,969],"tags":[1305,1304,1215],"class_list":["post-5310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-city","category-premier-league","tag-bench-selection","tag-benching","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5310","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=5310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}