Pep Guardiola makes Newcastle United U-turn ahead of Manchester City cup tie

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has revealed he won’t call up any academy players for tonight’s Carabao Cup clash against Newcastle United, despite previously saying he would.

After Man City beat West Ham United earlier this month, Guardiola claimed he would have to “play with some players from the second team [at Newcastle] because we cannot take the risks.”

The Spaniard is without Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and John Stones through injury, while Rodri isn’t available after being sent off during Saturday’s 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest.

But having spoken to key figures around the academy, Guardiola has decided the current crop of under-21 players are not ready to join the first team so early in the campaign,

“All the players in our squad are ready and unfortunately the second team we cannot take a few of them because we sold a lot of them, and still they are not ready to play with us,” Guardiola said.

“That is why we have to give time to them to develop. We cannot just bring them from the academy and play them there, no… we spoke with Txiki [Begiristain] and Brian [Barry-Murphy], they are not prepared right now because the academy is generations. They need time to develop.”

Instead, Guardiola will start fringe players such as Kalvin Phillip, while the former Barcelona man has confirmed Jack Grealish and Mateo Kovacic will play some part having recently returned from jury.

“This competition in this first round and second round is perfect when you have a full squad, ready,” said Guardiola. “That’s perfect because a few players do not play and you still get rhythm but in this situation, you have to approach it differently and prioritise other things.

“What you want to try to do is to not perform bad or not in terms of the principles of who we are as a team like happened against Southampton last season, it was the worst game I played as manager of Man City by far, so I didn’t recognise anything about that.

“You can lose. Of course, you can lose. Full credit to Southampton in that game but you have to be a minimum, that is all I want from my team every game, tomorrow it is going to happen, I am pretty sure of that.”

England international Kyle Walker will be rested. Guardiola is also weighing up whether or not to hand a break to Ruben Dias.

Guardiola continued:“Kyle Walker is exhausted, he played 90 minutes, played 90 minutes, and lately up and down up and down like a full back when before he was controlled a little bit more in the middle. So the energy, he spend a lot of energy so he has to rest otherwise he will be out for weeks and we don’t want that.”