Manchester City, Guardiola’s scales for Christmas: the weight test

In the end, the only one from Manchester City to have failed on the weight test is likely to be Pep Guardiola himself. The manager had warned on Saturday, before the Christmas holidays, that any player returning more than 3kg overweight would be excluded from the trip to Nottingham, tomorrow in the Premier League. The scale test was done on Christmas Day, but between the laughter generated by Erling Haaland’s post proclaiming himself “all good” and the fact that only the injured Jérémy Doku and John Stones risk missing tomorrow’s match, the idea is that all City players have passed it. Except Pep, in fact.

self-report

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“I must have gained 4 or 5 kilos due to all the food I ate and the alcohol I drank”, was Guardiola’s self-declaration reported by Manchester City’s social channels, which released some of his statements in view of tomorrow’s match at Forest in place of the traditional press conference, which was skipped today given that it is also a day of celebration in England. Pep, however, did not exclude himself from the trip to Nottingham as he had threatened to do with his players: he directed training regularly and will be on the bench tomorrow with the idea of ​​leading City to their seventh straight win in all competitions and at least a temporary overtaking of Arsenal, possible in the event of a victory given that Guardiola’s team plays at 1.30pm in Nottingham and the Gunners are two points ahead at 4pm at home against Brighton.

balance

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However, the scale test brought attention to the entire City world. The players took it with irony, both when the club released the video of the players being weighed before Christmas and with posts like that of Haaland’s scale, faithful to the 94kg which has been her ideal weight for a few years, an image to which Gigio Donnarumma reacted with amused emojis. City, like all Premier League clubs, does not make the list of players called up for a match public, so it is still possible that some shortcomings in the scale test could only be discovered tomorrow before the match, when the lineup is made official an hour and 15 minutes before kick-off. From the irony on social media and the videos released by players and clubs it seems that the height of the holidays passed without messing up the scales. Except for Pep himself.