Calendar makes it tough for player fitness - Pep | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola believes that fatigue has played a big part in the number of injuries that Manchester City and other Premier League clubs have had this season.

Ahead of our Premier League clash with Newcastle on Saturday at 15:00 (UK), the City boss said that Manuel Akanji will be out for eight to 10 weeks after suffering an abductor injury against Real Madrid.

It’s the latest injury blow in a season hampered by a number of setbacks, with Jack Grealish also unlikely to be available to face the Magpies after being forced off early in the 3-2 Champions League defeat.

Other clubs have also suffered with injuries and Guardiola reiterated that only a change to the calendar would help.

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“We always expect injuries during the season, not so much [as this season] but I would say it’s not just a problem for Man City,” he said.

“Tottenham, Arsenal right now, except Liverpool that was so stable in those terms, all the teams have examples - Real Madrid as well, many teams.

“When you accumulate season by season, like Manu, the body says it's enough.

“The solution to prevent that I think Jurgen Klopp and I said in the past the solution is the calendar. There is no other reason why there are a lot of injuries. No other question.”

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An accumulation of injuries has also made it difficult to maintain a consistent line-up while some players have had more minutes than normal.

Guardiola also believes that his squad have been affected by draining defeats conceded in the dying moments of matches.

“Always I rotate a lot the team, but everyone knows that at certain times the starting 9, 10, 11 was clear,” he added.

“But we cannot do it with the problems that we have and a lot of players who play a lot of minutes they are so tired.

“Emotionally as well because of how many times we were winning with 10 minutes left and lost the game.

“If you lose 5-1 against Arsenal it's easy to swallow. It’s more difficult the ones at Brentford, United and the last game against Madrid and these games.

“We know we have to suffer and we are not fine and we know that. We deserve to have a bad season, come on. In eight or nine years - we are human beings, it can happen.

“We were not consistent for many reasons, especially for that. We don’t have the players for the amount of games because of the injuries that we have and most players had to play a lot of games.”

City started with Akanji at right-back against Madrid, while John Stones moved into a holding midfield role.

And Guardiola says he has options to take on the role with new signing Abdukodir Khusanov one of a number of possibilities.

“We have Rico [Lewis] and Matheus [Nunes] and I don’t know if Khusanov can play there to help us," he added.

“It depends on the shape that we play and how we attack and defend. We’ll see.”