Manchester City squad faces strength in depth test against Newcastle in League Cup

Last season, the most successful of Manchester City’s history, the credit was shared out widely. In the domestic cup competitions, no outfield player started more matches than Aymeric Laporte. When he held up the FA Cup, he clasped the trophy with a well-earned sense of ownership.

Across the English cups, no forward was on the pitch for more minutes than Riyad Mahrez, City’s leading scorer in the FA Cup segment of their treble.

As City travel to Newcastle United to embark on their bid for the one significant piece of silverware, the League Cup, that escaped them in their glorious 2022/23 campaign, a glance back at how senior roles were rotated and spread last time around seems apt.

The League Cup is a platform for studied team changes and, carefully planned, an opportunity for the bigger, busier clubs to give first-team minutes to young talents or those who might feel marginalised.

And when a squad can call on the likes of Laporte and Mahrez to guarantee a certain level of freshness, it is a deep squad indeed. But here’s the new reality for City: Laporte and Mahrez, along with Ilkay Gundogan and academy-graduate Cole Palmer, were the outfielders most used in City’s three rounds of League Cup action last season; all of them left the club in the summer.

They are significant departures and, if sympathy for Pep Guardiola when he worries out loud about how his resources will be stretched given the fixture congestion in this crowded season tends to be limited, he pointed out fatigue can become cumulative. “The problem is the lack of rest, mentally especially, over years and years,” said the City manager.

His club sell shrewdly, buy wisely and spend big wherever potential to improve is identified. On the evidence of seven wins