Throughout the current season, City have been plagued by injuries to key players, a situation that prompted investment into the squad in January with Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis all signing and Claudio Echeverri arriving too.
John Stones, Rodri, Ederson, Nathan Ake and Erling Haaland will all be missing for the Everton game on Saturday.
However, Manuel Akanji and Phil Foden are both back in training while Oscar Bobb, who has missed a large proportion of the current campaign, is available again after making substitute appearances in our last two home wins over Leicester City and Crystal Palace.
MATCH PREVIEW | EVERTON V CITY
This allied to the emergence of academy starlets like Nico O’Reilly and James McAtee will see the manager forced to drop several players from the travelling squad on Saturday, a situation he’s frustrated about.
“I don’t like a big squad and now one or two players cannot even travel to Goodison Park,” he told the media in his pre-match press conference.
“That is terrible. It’s awful. It makes no sense for those players.
“Not even go to the bench, stay at home. They go home and say ‘what am I doing here?’ They cannot do their job.”
Looking ahead to the 2025/26 season, Guardiola insists reliability and availability is going to be key to his plans as he looks to shape his squad for success once again.
“The most important thing is to analyse who will be more reliable than the other ones. This is important,” he added.
“The player can be reliable? Okay. We don’t need more.
“The players be like this season, like the previous seasons and play just 20% or 25%, he stays maybe we get another player for that position because he’s not reliable.
“I think that’s more than the quality because I have no doubts. You ask me how is the squad this season it’s exceptional. I don’t have any complaints about the club, I never have done, but it’s exceptional.
“But the problem is we didn’t have it. If you analysed with the players all fit – Rodri, John, Nathan, Manu and now Erling six weeks out, all of them are fit the team is exceptional. “But unfortunately during the season we didn’t have that.
“The question is next season. If we have the players that they are not reliable and they want to stay here we will have to make a longer squad. That’s the balance we have to find talking and talking and talking.”
Watch the manager’s media briefing above.
Everton v City app coverage
Our official Man City app allows you to follow all of the action from the match in one place.
Minute-by-minute text updates will begin in our Matchday Centre two hours before kick-off, whilst our Matchday Live show will begin at 13:45 (UK).
Keith Curle and Paul Lake, alongside host Chris Latchem, will be in the studio on the latest Matchday Live show, offering their expert insight at half-time and in greater detail after the final whistle.
During the game you can listen to live audio commentary from Alistair Mann and Michael Brown while our text commentary continues.
Make sure to have push notifications turned on as well, so you can be alerted to key moments in the action, including goals, red cards and the team news.
Short highlights will be available from 19:00 (UK), whilst extended highlights and a CITY+ full-match replay will be available from midnight.
