Pep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City, has admitted that Jeremy Doku is expected to be missing for “a while” before big games are played in the Premier League and in the Champions League.
Doku had achieved three goals and three templates in the successive appearances against Salford City and Ipswich Town in the early this month. But he was absent last week by an injury to Paris Saint-Germain and was again excluded against Chelsea for the comeback victory on Saturday.
There is no final timeline about documentary recovery, but he won’t play against Club Brugge this week and will probably not be visible to Arsenal the next Sunday.
“For a while. I don’t know how much, but for a while, yes. He will certainly not be ready for Wednesday. I don’t think for Arsenal [either]. We’ll see, “said Guardiola.
Although the city has the depth of covering Doku’s absence, the squad continues to deal with injuries. This resulted in the new 20-year-old Abdukodir Khusanov with minimal preparation directly came across the starting line-up against Chelsea and made a nightmare debut possible.
“The problem is that we are continuing the problems. Khusanov shouldn’t have played; he had to take the time to do it,” commented the boss.
“It is not just against Chelsea in the Premier League, which comes from another country and does not communicate much with his teammates and arrives without training sessions to see what they want to do, what the process and the others have.
“To start, he started; imagine that we all live what Khusanov lived and what happened, it would be ‘Oh god!’ … but the situation is Ruben [Dias] Is not there, Nathan [Ake] That is also why we are lucky enough that Manu [Akanji] stayed and John [Stones] Can help us for our final on Wednesday. “
Guardiola describes the Brugge game as a “final” because the entire City’s entire Champions League status drives with a 90-minute match for the season.
Win only two of her first seven games – and none of the last five – left the city before the top 24 before the eight -year match day. You have to defeat Brugge, have three points in advance and fight to stay in the KO -lying areas, and hope that other results will also go in your favor to qualify.
In the best case, City can end the 19th place, which would mean two additional games to play in the knockout round play-off. If you don’t claim three points against Brugge, City would be from the KO -League for the first time before the KO phase since the 2012/13 campaign.