Manchester City have emerged as a likely active suitor for Crystal Palace captain Marc Gu\u00e9hi should their recent injury problems become long term. Gu\u00e9hi has six months left on his contract and will not extend it; he had been expected to remain at Palace for the rest of the season, a position confirmed by Oliver Glasner in mid-December.<\/p>\n
The urgency at City comes after both of Pep Guardiola\u2019s starting centre backs were forced off in the second half of a 1\u20131 draw with a manager-less Chelsea side on Sunday. Josko Gvardiol pulled up in the 51st minute and had to be helped from the pitch by a physio and Chelsea captain Reece James. R\u00faben Dias departed around half an hour later. Guardiola warned that \u201cit doesn\u2019t look good\u201d and predicted the pair would be out \u201cfor a few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe have a lot [of injuries],\u201d he fretted. \u201cJohn Stones is missing for I don\u2019t know how many months. R\u00faben now will be out, Josko will be out. Nathan [Ak\u00e9], always we know with Nathan he cannot play regularly. It\u2019s the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cStay strong and we will find a solution. The spirit is there and will be there. Of course I have concerns. Have you seen the bench today? Four players from the academy and now we will have more. We don\u2019t have players.\u201d<\/p>\n
That solution could involve January investment. City were linked with Gu\u00e9hi last month; Liverpool were thought to retain a strong interest and appeared to be the only party prepared to bid in January. Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona were understood to be interested only in a free transfer in the summer. According to BBC Sport, should Dias and\/or Gvardiol face long-term absences, City would be prepared to accelerate their pursuit of Gu\u00e9hi.<\/p>\n
Concern about defensive depth was already evident when City recalled academy defender Max Alleyne from his loan at Watford. The 20-year-old had made six consecutive league starts for the Hornets over the festive period, producing a trio of clean sheets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City consider a January bid for Marc Gu\u00e9hi after injuries to R\u00faben Dias and Josko Gvardiol in doubt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,1056,1163],"tags":[983,1006,1032],"class_list":["post-5748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crystal-palace","category-man-city","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-captaincy","tag-contract-disputes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5748","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=5748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}