Pep Guardiola reveals fury with Man City’s Kyle Walker for ‘stupid’ mistake committed in December

Pep Guardiola has said he is ‘still so angry’ with Kyle Walker for his red card against RB Leipzig in December.

The full-back was sent off in the latter stages of Manchester City’s 2-1 loss in Germany for a needless kick out on Leipzig attacker Andre Silva.

Walker was immediately shown the red card, in a game City didn’t need to win as they had already guaranteed top spot in their Champions League group.

At the time, Guardiola said he agreed with the referee’s decision to show Walker a straight red, and three months, his temper clearly hasn’t cooled on the matter.

“He deserved the three -game ban. When a player does a stupid thing, he deserves to be banned for three games,” the City manager said in Tuesday’s pre-match press conference.

“I’m not so kind to Kyle in this kind of action. I’m still so angry with him.

City did try to appeal Walker’s extended ban, although Uefa upheld their three-game ban, which means Walker cannot play on Wednesday when the Sky Blues host Sporting Lisbon in the second leg of their Champions League tie.

That could well explain Guardiola’s fury, with the Catalan revealing in his pre-match press conference that he also cannot call upon the services of Joao Cancelo for the second leg due to illness.

“It’s not necessary to discuss with him, he knows it,” Guardiola explained. “Kyle is so important for us, you saw the game he played against United?

“But in Leipzig when we had already qualified, 80 minutes in and he made this kind of action? He deserves the three games.

“The club appealed but I did not agree. They have to do it because in other similar cases it was just two games [but] he deserved it. Hopefully he learns for the future.”

Walker and Cancelo join Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake in Guardiola’s list of unavailable players, meaning he only has three fit defenders for Wednesday’s game: John Stones, Aymeric Laporte and Oleksandr Zinchenko.

“We don’t have many players. We have just 14 players available,” said Guardiola. “We have a few problems, the suspension for Kyle, Joao is sick and cannot play. We are in a little bit of trouble behind, in the back four.

“Of course we had an incredible result in the first leg, we start the game 5-0, but it is not done. “

Asked about Ake, Guardiola said: “Yeah he’s out too. Right now nobody else, but we have just three defenders. We will have to adapt with the second team, maybe we will see what we are going to do. We will look at the training session and see what we have to do.”

The City boss added it was ‘too risky’ to play Ake, and strongly hinted that Kevin De Bruyne would not play on Wednesday as he’s one booking away from a suspension.

With City just down to three senior defenders, Guardiola could start Fernandinho at centre-back or give youngster Luke Mbete a start in the Champions League.