Pep Guardiola has confirmed Erling Haaland will be available for the Champions League meeting with Real Madrid and suggested the striker will be at his sharpest for the tie.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think to let him play and I prefer him training to make a rhythm,\u201d the Catalan coach told assembled reporters. \u201cAfter injury, when he drops, he always struggles to have that real pace.\u201d Much to Real Madrid\u2019s chagrin, Haaland should now be back up to speed.<\/p>\n
Haaland has appeared intermittently in recent weeks. Guardiola left his No. 9 out of the FA Cup fourth round clash with fourth-tier Salford City before restoring him for the Premier League visit of Newcastle last month. At the Etihad he engaged in a physical, 90-minute battle with the towering Magpies centre back Dan Burn, as Newcastle adopted an aggressive man-marking approach that night, a tactic increasingly common across the Premier League and one which Mikel Arteta has blamed for the rise of set-piece dependency, as Burn latched himself onto Haaland like a Geordie limpet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to make an alternative to long balls with Erling when he\u2019s up against a player like Burn,\u201d Guardiola fretted. \u201cWe have to make an alternative so we still have a dream for him to play and play more, and with man marking that\u2019s difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
City then had seven days to prepare for the trip to Leeds United\u2019s Elland Road yet that was not enough for a full recovery from the Burn encounter. The 25-year-old was, however, fit enough to play the full 90 minutes against Nottingham Forest in the subsequent match. To avoid overloading him, Guardiola adopted a cautious approach for another trip to St James\u2019s Park.<\/p>\n
Guardiola pointed to past experience when explaining his management of minutes. \u201cWe have experience of that with the treble\u2014you have to arrive in the decisive moment of the season with players,\u201d he said. “It\u2019s a pity that the Premier League is not in our hands. That is a big drop against Nottingham [Forest] but don\u2019t think much, recover, go to Madrid, make a good selection and hopefully we can behave\u2014win or lose\u2014in the way we are.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s always been my focus, when we play on the biggest stages against the big teams it\u2019s not about winning or losing but being who we are as individuals and as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a time when every Arsenal match appears to feature a player going down holding a different part of their body, City are emptying their treatment room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola confirms Haaland will be fit and at his sharpest for the Real Madrid tie tonight in Madrid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,172],"tags":[1305,1047,1521],"class_list":["post-8021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-bench-selection","tag-champions-league","tag-haaland-injury-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8021","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=8021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}