Pep Guardiola gives encouraging Man City injury update as he begins Man Utd plan for FA Cup final

Pep Guardiola has given an encouraging update on the injury situation at Manchester City ahead of the final Premier League match of the season, and the finals against Manchester United and Inter Milan in the coming weeks.

City picked up six new injury concerns during the week, with Ruben Dias, Aymeric Laporte, Manuel Akanji and Jack Grealish dropping out of the squad for the midweek trip to Brighton & Hove Albion, in addition to Nathan Ake, who has struggled with a hamstring injury over recent weeks. The champions also suffered a further two injury blows on Wednesday as John Stones and Phil Foden had to be replaced in the second half at the Amex.

There was a slight boost on Thursday when Laporte and Foden were pictured in training, and Guardiola indicatated that none of the injuries are serious when he confirmed that no-one from his squad has been ruled out definitely for Sunday’s Premier League encounter against Brentford.

“They are getting better, some of them,” said the City boss on Friday. “We will see tomorrow in training in the afternoon and we will decide how they feel for the last game [of the Premier League season] because we need to keep our rhythm as much as possible before the long week to prepare the final [against United].

“Today, no [one has been ruled out], but some of them are still at half. We will see tomorrow,” he added. “We will see, it depends how the players feel in terms of conditions because we don’t want to take a risk. If the players are available we take a team to win the game.”

The plethora of fresh injuries this week was especially concerning given City meet United at Wembley next weekend in the FA Cup final, before facing Inter Milan in the Champions League final seven days later.

Guardiola said he has not started to think fully about Inter at this stage, but has already begun planning on how to stop Erik ten Hag’s side. “I am more focused right now on United,” he said.

“Yesterday I saw the game against Chelsea and I started to review a little what they have done to us in the game at Old Trafford. I prepared that game knowing which players we will have at our disposal.”

Guardiola also said he has started to think about his starting XI for the United game in just over a week. “I have a vague idea,” he revealed. “United play different to Inter Milan. We have to defend and attack differently and some players adjust better.

“It’s Brentford [first] - we see what we have to do and then on Wednesday when we join together again [for training], it’s how many players do I have? Are they fit? If they are not fit they are out for the first final and then prepare.

“After I see United yesterday… I was really impressed in the past about how good they are and we have to be careful. I would be careful anyway but after the game they did yesterday and recently, we are going as good as possible in the final of the FA Cup.”