Manchester City have certainly responded well to their UEFA Champions League exit. After suffering yet another European heartbreak, they have gone on another domestic tear, winning back-to-back 5-0, and then following that up with a 5-1 win over Wolves in midweek.
City have further cemented their EPL superiority, with a 15-1 aggregate over that three-match stretch. They now have, metaphorically, nine of their ten fingers on the league title trophy.
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Elsewhere, City also officially signed Erling Haaland this week, thereby nabbing the biggest prize of the summer transfer window. Now he moves over to a giant club where he will have the chance to win bigger trophies.
Now, on to the injury news. At his post-match press conference on Wednesday evening, manager Pep Guardiola said that both Fernandinho and Aymeric Laporte picked up knocks in the rout over Wolves and that they will face late fitness assessments ahead of this game.
Meanwhile Ruben Dias, John Stones and Kyle Walker are out for the season, and that means City has a full blown defensive crisis on their hands for this one. It’s possible that City will only have one fit center back (Nathan Ake) this weekend, and he’s only semi-fit at that.
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Bank (TheSportsBank.Net) and author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” as well as “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune, and he co-hosts the After Extra Time podcast, part of Edge of the Crowd Network. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.