Bournemouth v Man City: Pre-match preview

Michael Plant brings the latest news from Pep Guardiola's pre-match press conference, which included an update on Manchester City's injury issues.

Transcript

00:00I'm at Manchester City's CFA training base where this afternoon Pep Guardiola held his

00:04pre-match press conference ahead of the game against Bournemouth tomorrow in the Premier

00:08League. The big talking point was of course injuries. City really struggle with quite

00:12a few injuries at the moment. Up to nine players have either been ruled out or doubts ahead

00:16of the game. And Guardiola speaking in the press conference today, to be honest he didn't

00:20really give much away. He said that the players are, some of them are kind of half-half in

00:24terms of could be back for the game. So at this stage we're not really any the wiser

00:28and he kind of joked and said you'll see the team sheet tomorrow. So the only update

00:33really that he did give was that Savino doesn't look as quite as serious as maybe we first

00:37feared on Wednesday night. He was of course taken off on a stretcher against Tottenham

00:41and initially there were concerns that it was a long-term injury but Guardiola confirmed

00:45that it's not a fracture, doesn't look like a major injury and he is actually possibly

00:49in line to return this weekend. So the fact that he's even in contention to possibly play

00:54some part does indicate that it's not a serious injury. Guardiola has spoken a lot about the

00:58fact that he prefers to work with a smaller squad. Of course when you do have so many

01:01injuries up to nine as I mentioned that does create plenty of problems and Guardiola was

01:05asked could he possibly look to make some additions in the January transfer window and

01:10his response was pretty emphatic no was the answer because he's hoping that many players

01:14will be back before the end of the nine. Only Rodri was the only one who won't be back by

01:18the end of January. Possibly Oscar Bob as well but certainly will be in around January

01:22that he'll be back. So no plans for City to really massively drop into the transfer market

01:26in January as a result of this injury outbreak and the only other news that I suppose has

01:30dominated Manchester football this week is the appointment of Ruben Amorim across the

01:35road at Old Trafford. Guardiola welcomed him of course bizarrely will actually come up

01:39against Amorim next week when City take on Sporting Lisbon in Portugal. Bit of a strange

01:44quirk I suppose that one of his actually penultimate matches still in charge of Sporting will come

01:48against the side who will be a big rival in just a few weeks time but you welcome Amorim.

01:53Refused to give him any kind of tips or advice. I'm sure that his bosses at City will be happy

01:58with that but welcomed him and he's expecting a fierce rivalry from the Portugal manager

02:02in the coming months and years of course.