Manchester City’s injury concerns are easing with the Blues set to welcome back another two players from injury
Pep Guardiola could have Jeremy Doku and Savinho back in time to face Newcastle next week as Manchester City’s injury problems ease. Savinho has been out since New Year’s Day while Doku went down later in the month to leave the Blues short of wide players despite the arrival of Antoine Semenyo.
City were poor in beating League Two side Salford City on Saturday, with Guardiola putting the team’s struggles down to poor build-up and reading of the game. He was adamant that using wingers would have seen a better performance, but didn’t want to overload new signing Semenyo.
Savinho could have featured after stunning the manager in training this week but it was decided not to throw the Brazilian straight in. He should be in contention for Newcastle though, and Guardiola remains excited by the winger’s potential.
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“He’s [been] injured for six to eight weeks, two months is a lot of time,” he said. “He could play a few minutes but we didn’t want to take risks and step by step. Training two days ago with us, it was like wow. He played so good in training. When Savinho will learn to make the finished product in terms of assists, he will be an unbelievable winger on both sides.
“We know how important Doku is to break teams like Salford or teams who defend deep – proper guys who have the ability to drop them and dribbles help us a lot in the way we want to play. I’m more than delighted with how the team behave.”
Doku has not yet returned to training but is ‘close’ to a return and could also be back as soon as next week. Those two comebacks will leave Mateo Kovacic and Josko Gvardiol as the only long-term absentees in the squad, and Guardiola said on Friday that Kovacic is back on the grass as he enters the final stages of his recovery.
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