Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has once again insisted that Rico Lewis remains crucial to his operation this season following the 2-2 draw at Crystal Palace.
The England international full-back, who also operated throughout midfield for the Premier League champions, was responsible for a vital equalising goal in South London to rescue a point for Manchester City at the weekend.
However, his quick-fire double of yellow cards meant that he was dismissed and took on a one-game suspension, meaning that he will be ruled out for the club’s meeting with Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United at the Etihad Stadium next weekend.
Discussion around the 20-year-old’s importance to Manchester City, alongside preparations for Juventus in the UEFA Champions League and what more he can demand from his players this season was all part of the post-match press conference at Crystal Palace.
And rounding off the latest fixture for Manchester City, here is every single word from part two of Pep Guardiola’s post-match debrief from Selhurst Park on Saturday evening!
On Rico Lewis
“Rico (Lewis) is so important for us. Unfortunately he cannot play the next game for the reason that everybody knows.”
On how many players that featured against Crystal Palace can be ready for Juventus, and whether he has studied the Serie A side
“My people have started to study and fortunately we don’t play on Tuesday we play on Wednesday, we have one more day to recover these players because we have players to come back.
“And yeah, of course it’s Juventus Turin – the most important team in Italy alongside of course Milan and Inter, but in terms of Serie A the team who won the most. And a nice stadium, and we’ll try to get a good result.”
On how he can get more out of a team that have already given so much over the years, or whether it is just not feasible
“We have to! The solution is to give me my players back and we will do it. But it’s not possible right now and I think it’s going to happen for a long time. Because we recovered last week the four central defenders, but they passed from the massage table to the pitch, and after the pitch they go back to the massage table again.
“So normally after the table massage, they need tempo, the training a little bit, but the circumstances that we have we could not do it and we demand him a lot, because they come from many years arriving in the last stages of all competitions, so the rest is few.
“And at the end, there are the moments that the body cannot sustain, we try to, because the doctors, the physios especially and everyone is working incredibly this season like never before I have seen.
“But the reality is that we have few players to rotate in this type of period, when we arrive in the last stages from the Treble season or Quadruple season and this kind of stuff, it’s because everybody was there, and everybody is involved.
“What we have in that position today except McAtee, Jack (Grealish), and Jeremy (Doku), the other ones are from the Academy and it’s going to happen for the next games, for the next three weeks, one month it’s going to happen the same.
“But it’s not a question of unlucky, it’s a question of what happened. It’s life, sometimes it happens, you have to accept it, and this is the challenge, and that’s why the challenge has been given for the players again in 3PM on one Saturday in the winter time in Selhurst Park, they did it.
“Of course we could win, we could not do it, and it’s football, and we know that this season will be like this, and what I said to the players; don’t feel sorry, please. Accept the challenge, it will be more difficult, but it is what it is, and maybe at the end we will have more satisfaction in the way we are going to behave in these problems that maybe in the other seasons that we won the title.
“So always all the teams, not just City, want all their players fit and ready and sometimes unfortunately since the beginning it could not happen, and it’s going to be I think for longer. But we are going to, one way or another, either way we are going to try.”
