PEP GUARDIOLA DOES not expect Erling Haaland to be fit for Manchester City’s Premier League match against Crystal Palace on Saturday, and admitted the Norway striker is a doubt for next week’s Club World Cup fixtures.
City’s top scorer, who has 19 goals this season, missed last weekend’s win at Luton and the midweek victory over Red Star Belgrade with a foot injury, and has been receiving treatment in Marbella.
Haaland reported back at City on Friday morning and Guardiola said he would be assessed by club doctors before any further decisions are made.
City are due to travel to Saudi Arabia after Saturday’s match for the Club World Cup, with a semi-final against opponents yet to be determined on Tuesday. Either the final or the third-place play-off will follow on Friday.
“Haaland arrived today and the doctors will see him and we will see how he feels,” Guardiola said.
“He had treatment away. Hopefully he can travel to Saudi and we will see if he is able to play in the first game or the second game, or when we come back. I don’t think he will play [against Palace] but maybe he surprises me.
“It is not a fracture, just stress. Sometimes players recover quickly, some longer. Day by day, week by week, we see how he feels. The moment he doesn’t have pain he will play.”
City’s come-from-behind win at Kenilworth Road last Sunday ended a run of four league games without a win, and any talk of a mini-crisis of form has disappeared in the last week, with a young side earning a 3-2 win in Serbia with the help of goals from debutant Micah Hamilton and 20-year-old Oscar Bobb.
Both players are already older than the more established Rico Lewis, part of last season’s treble-winning squad, pointing to more encouraging work being done by the club’s academy, which besides first-team players has also contributed to the balance sheet with several youngsters sold on.
“For all the big clubs, the academy is an important part of many things,” Guardiola said. “We just see what happened in the last five or six years with academy players. They help us or they make a career away with a good transfer for the club to be sustainable economically.
“I know how important it is for our fans, our people to identify the young lads like Rico, Phil (Foden), Micah as well. Coming from being seven, eight, nine years old and being in the first team is something phenomenal.
“We continue to work on that and hopefully in future we can have more players like this.”
Palace will head to Manchester without a win in their last five Premier League matches, four of them defeats, but they enjoyed a famous win at the Etihad in October 2021 and have proven stubborn opponents on many occasions.
“It has always been a tough game,” Guardiola said. “How they defend is brilliant and they don’t need much at set-pieces with (Joachim) Anderson and the other guys. I don’t remember easy games against Roy Hodgson teams. With Patrick (Vieira) also, but especially with Roy.”
Asked if he could imagine still being in the game at Hodgson’s age, 76, Guardiola laughed.
“I don’t think so, but you never know!” he said. “To have the fire and passion inside to still be there and the team is really good.
“They played incredibly well against Liverpool, unfortunately they had a player sent off and with 10 against 11 against Liverpool it is almost impossible, but 11 against 11 I don’t know what would have happened.”
