Pep Guardiola may have to rotate his Manchester City team in forthcoming Premier League games after admitting Kevin De Bruyne was sick before the Bournemouth game last Saturday.
De Bruyne was sick and had just one training session before starting City’s 4-0 win over the Cherries but signalled the bench to come off after 74 minutes with the Blues 2-0 up.
“He was sick.” admitted Guardiola. “The last two or three days he vomited and had a fever. He dropped two or three kilos.”
The Catalan explained that De Bruyne had only trained the day before the game, adding: “We decided to start him and when he is tired we change him. He helped us a lot by playing 65-70 minutes.”
Rotation would appear to be the name of the game for the Manchester City’s Christmas fixtures with games against Newcastle United, Crystal Palace and Watford coming up in the space of a week with Guardiola mindful of fatigue.
After the Newcastle game, City will have four days rest before travelling to South London for a tricky game at Crystal Palace.
There are just 56 hours between the Palace and Watford kick offs on December 31 and January 2 and City follow the Watford game with an FA Cup Third Round tie against Burnley four days later.
With the fitness of Vincent Kompany always a source of concern Guardiola was fulsome in praise for his squad players who had come through a gruelling Carabao Cup quarter final at Leicester City last week which went to penalties.
“Of course we will rotate in that period.” said Guardiola, who explained: “Fatigue might happen but we have a good squad. Gabriel [Jesus] played 120 minutes at Leicester and is the best fighter in high pressing I have ever seen in my life. He helps us a lot with the intensity.
“Bernardo [Silva] played an amazing 30 minutes, Danilo helped us, [Ilkay] Gundogan as well. We have Yaya [Toure], and [Oleksandr] Zinchenko was man of the match [against Leicester] as well.”