Pep Guardiola reveals when Jack Grealish will be back from groin injury

Pep Guardiola has revealed Jack Grealish’s groin injury is not as bad as he first feared and that the Manchester City winger will only be out for around 10 days.

Grealish was replaced in the first half of Tuesday’s Champions League victory over Copenhagen and was in obvious discomfort as he made his way off the pitch. Guardiola said after the game that the former Aston Villa man had suffered a groin problem but was unsure of the extent of the issue.

The situation hadn’t changed much three days later when Guardiola addressed the media ahead of Saturday’s game against Chelsea - which City drew 1-1. The Catalan explained he would discover the prognosis after the press conference and was subsequently quizzed on the nature of Grealish’s injury following the Chelsea match.

“It's not that much, not as bad as we expected,” he explained. “It will be maybe 10 days. [Initially we thought] it was three weeks or a month, but it is less so it is good news.”

The 10-day lay-off means Grealish won’t be available for the upcoming games against Brentford and Bournemouth over the next seven days, but could be back in time for the FA Cup trip to Luton Town on 27 February, or the Manchester derby at the start of March.

Grealish joins Josko Gvardiol on the sidelines, but the pair are City’s only absentees for the midweek game. Bernardo Silva recovered from a knock he sustained in the Copenhagen win and played around 25 minutes in Saturday’s draw with Chelsea. Mateo Kovacic, who has also been out recently, was back on the bench at the weekend.

The dropped points against Mauricio Pochettino’s side means City trail league leaders Liverpool by four points, albeit they have a game in hand over the Merseyside club and by next week will have played the same number of matches.

“Winning or losing, we go onto the next one,” Guardiola said on Saturday. “Now we recover and go on to Brentford, which has always been a really tough game. Let's go.”