Palace dilemma If Manchester City lose on Saturday at Crystal Palace, their Premier League title hopes will take a dent but there will be many games to recover.
If they lose on Tuesday at home to RB Leipzig, their Champions League hopes are over. There is no reason why Pep Guardiola can't play exactly the same players for both games, but a manager who is known for changing his line-ups for specific opposition also respects that if the league may be more of a priority the European deadline is far more deadly.
Even planning to play the same XI for both is a risk because of the unknowns that could happen at Selhurst Park, but that is why Guardiola has the career that he does.
He made a similar call a bit later on in the 2018/19 campaign, when he predicted that his best players wouldn't be able to play so many games in a short spell but chose to go weaker in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final rather than the league.