Pep Guardiola names two Man City players he's forced to play as injury problems mount

Pep Guardiola refused to make excuses for Manchester City's losing run, but listed the players he has unavailable to highlight how far away from full strength the Blues are.

City have lost at Tottenham, Bournemouth, Sporting and Brighton in the space of 11 torrid days, and arrived at the Amex Stadium with another injury added to the list as Jeremy Doku was ruled out.

Guardiola insisted his side played well vs Brighton and also at Spurs and Sporting, but bemoaned his tired squad's ability to maintain their intensity and aggression for 90 minutes. He left Manu Akanji and Nathan Ake on the bench as Jahmai Simpson-Pusey started again for his Premier League debut.

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Kyle Walker struggled but Guardiola said he is not fully fit, while Kevin De Bruyne was unable to salvage the game off the bench - both playing ahead of schedule.

"Kyle is not ready for 90 minutes at all because he trained few training sessions all season so far and still we are not able to do it for a long time," Guardiola explained. "Hopefully we can maintain the level when the whole squad come back. All the teams have a lot of injuries, hopefully we can turn it around with all the players being fit.

"The point is we don't have the players. The four central defenders, all four are injured. And Rodri, the best player, is not there. Kevin is away from his best. Doku is injured. Jack [Grealish] is injured. You can do it for one game but to be consistent you cannot.

"In the second half if I could use Manu or Nathan or Ruben [Dias] and after that in the last