Pep Guardiola reveals why he replaced Phil Foden in Man City loss to RB Leipzig

Pep Guardiola revealed Phil Foden felt pain in his ankle during Manchester City’s 2-1 defeat to RB Leipzig on Tuesday night, and was replaced as a ‘precaution’.

The England international was taken off at half-time in Germany, with Raheem Sterling coming on his place.

Speaking after the game, Guardiola also gave an update on Nathan Ake, who was withdrawn in the final few minutes of the encounter.

“Nathan has a problem in his back. We will see tomorrow,” the City boss told reporters. “Phil had problems in the beginning of the game in his ankle, [he] struggled a little bit. As a precaution I decided to, in his position, play Raheem.”

First-half struggles

City were far from their fluid best on Tuesday, although it’s no surprise given they’d already secured top spot in Group A and there was nothing riding on the game.

Despite that, Guardiola was evidently a little disgruntled in his post-match press conference and gave his view on City’s subpar performance.

“We played better in the second half. We were more aggressive, we played to win the game and we lost it. Congratulations to Leipzig.

“The first half we lacked a little bit of rhythm. They have a really good team, we knew that from before the group stage. The second half was much better, but unfortunately one or two mistakes and they punished us.”

Guardiola also told reporters he had no issue with the decision to send off Kyle Walker in the latter stages of the game, with the right-back seeing a straight red for his kick out at Andre Silva.

No concern over clean sheets

The result in Leipzig means City finish the group stage having conceded in all six games so far in the competition.

While it’s far from the ideal scenario for the Premier League Champions, Guardiola was noncommittal when asked if City would need to start keeping clean sheets in the knockout stages of the tournament.

“We make an incredible group stage,” said the former Barcelona manager. “We qualified with one game left in a tough group.

“I am more than satisfied with the performance in every single game and hopefully in February we can arrive in the best condition as possible.

“Who knows? Sometimes we concede a goal and we cannot score more. Of course it is better to not concede goals, but the way we played in all the games, we played much better than the opponent, except today. We struggled in the first half a little bit, but in general we make an incredibly good group stage.”