Man City forced to train for just five minutes as Pep Guardiola complains

Pep Guardiola says Manchester City have been reduced to five-minute training sessions on account of their gruelling schedule.

The treble winners go into Wednesday’s Carabao Cup clash away at Newcastle off the back of barely any work on the training ground. And the City boss insists that with several players in the red zone having played many minutes this season the situation is unlikely to change any time soon.

“With recovery time we are on 5-10 minutes training session – that’s all,” he said. “You cannot train. We have few people but we are used to it. Previous seasons was the same. We have two more games because of the World Cup but the rest is the same.

“The problem isn’t mental. All the players want to fight for the titles. The problem is the lack of rest. Mentally especially. This is the problem.

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“Two or three weeks off between seasons is nothing. The problem is a lack of rest, year on year. The Champions League will be longer in future and it is what it is. Complain a little bit here and then forget it.”

City have won the Carabao Cup four times under Guardiola but it has not stopped the manager complaining about the extra workload the competition loads on to their season in the past.

And with a match away against Wolves on Saturday and a trip to Germany for the Champions League tie against RB Leipzig, it will see Guardiola ring the changes for the trip to St James’s Park.

“We have a lot of players injured or with a lot of minutes. They have to rest. Wolves and Leipzig is much more important. That’s why you see the guys who didn’t play much will play.

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“We’ll travel there to win the game but I have to consider a lot of effort in this period and they’re going to get injured again otherwise we’ll be in trouble.”

Kalvin Phillips will start in midfield and Jack Grealish and Mateo Kovacic are set to play some part after recovering from injuries.

“Jack is much better, Mateo as well. I don’t know how many minutes they will get or whether from the beginning or in the second half,” he added.

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