Pep Guardiola selected a markedly different Manchester City starting XI for Saturday\u2019s match with Wolverhampton Wanderers, with Erling Haaland and Phil Foden left out and Marc Gu\u00e9hi making his Manchester City debut.<\/p>\n
The change came after City extended a winless run to four games and suffered a damaging Champions League defeat to Bod\u00f8\/Glimt on Tuesday. The manager faced difficult calls, the most notable being the omission of the squad\u2019s most prolific striker from the starting line-up.<\/p>\n
Haaland was named among the substitutes for the first time in a Premier League match in 267 days. He had started City\u2019s opening 22 top-flight fixtures of the campaign and was last on a Premier League bench when Wolves visited the Etihad Stadium on May 2, 2025.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old has 26 goals in 31 appearances across all competitions this season but has clearly lost momentum. His only goal in the eight matches since Christmas Day was a penalty against Brighton & Hove Albion.<\/p>\n
Guardiola previously substituted Haaland with more than 10 minutes remaining of last weekend\u2019s Manchester derby at Old Trafford, citing a need for more energy in the team during a 2\u20130 defeat. In that fixture Haaland scarcely touched the ball and the manager\u2019s decision highlighted concerns about fatigue amid a congested schedule.<\/p>\n
Per BBC Sport, Crystal Palace\u2019s Jean-Philippe Mateta was the only forward across Europe\u2019s top five leagues to have played more than Haaland this season. Haaland has nonetheless featured heavily for his club, with 31 appearances and 2,569 minutes of competitive action, while Norway have called on their record goalscorer on five occasions this season.<\/p>\n
After the midweek defeat to Bod\u00f8\/Glimt, Haaland \u201ctook full responsibility\u201d for City\u2019s 3-1 loss, apologising to supporters for his failure to score and contributing with his fellow captains to cover expenses racked up by the travelling fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola drops Haaland and Foden as he reshuffles City XI following a poor run and CL defeat. badly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,969],"tags":[1305,1304,1047],"class_list":["post-6211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-premier-league","tag-bench-selection","tag-benching","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6211","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=6211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}