Manchester City travel to newly promoted Norwich City tomorrow before kicking off their 2019-20 Champions League campaign against Shakhtar Donestsk on Wednesday. The big news in regards to City this past international break was the serious knee injury to starting defender Aymeric Laporte.
When asked about the severity of the first teamer’s injury, City manager Pep Guardiola said at his press conference today: “Five months, six months. Next year sure, January or February.”
Guardiola also confirmed that Benjamin Mendy has returned to training with the team and that German international Leroy Sane (knee injury) will be back again at some point before the season ends.
Meanwhile striker Gabriel Jesus has recovered from a hamstring problem, and he’ll be available for selection tomorrow.
As monumental a task this already was for Norwich City, it’s now made that much harder by the injury crisis they have to endure. The Canaries have eight players ruled out of commission for this one.
Max Aarons, Moritz Leitner, Tom Trybull Mario Vrancic and Christoph Zimmermann all have fresh injury concerns.
Onel Hernandez and Timm Klose are long term injury absentees while Patrick Roberts is ineligible for this clash.
In addition to all of that, Norwich also has three players who are doubts for this one: Tim Krul, Ben Godfrey and Grant Hanley.
Their back line will no doubt be weakened, and its match-up against a very potent Manchester City attack could indeed make for a very long afternoon into evening.
Manchester City at Norwich City FYIs
Manchester City Starting XI Prediction: go to this link
Kickoff: Saturday Sept 14, 5:30 pm, Carrow Road
Google Result Probability: Manchester City win 85%, Draw 10%, Norwich City win 5%
Odds via Points Bet: Manchester City win -650, Draw +750, Norwich City win +1500
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
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