Pep Guardiola's England World Cup joke underlines Man City need for a striker

Pep Guardiola joked that he is doing his bit for England’s World Cup ambitions after picking his Three Lions as Manchester City’s attacking trident at Burnley. But the rarity of occasions on which Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and Raheem Sterling have been the front three for the Blues underlines the reasons Guardiola has been pushing for a striker in the summer transfer window.

Those three City stars all slot around the fulcrum of Harry Kane when they play for the national team, meaning they are in competition with each other as well as top players from other clubs. City are in pole position to sign Erling Haaland this summer, and if they do get a top-class striker, Foden, Grealish and Sterling - if he stays at the club - will net season revert to competing with each other for the other two forward slots, along with Riyad Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus and new boy Julian Alvarez.

But the fact that they have only formed City’s front-three four times this season, and have only scored one goal between them in those four games, perhaps reflects Guardiola’s seeming reluctance to field them all together. Two of those four games came when Mahrez was away at the African Nations Cup with Algeria in January, the 1-0 win over Chelsea and the 1-1 draw at Southampton.

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The others were the 3-1 win at Watford, when Mahrez and Jesus both came off the bench, and the 2-0 win at Turf Moor, when the goals both came from midfielders. Guardiola light-heartedly claimed he was doing his bit for his adopted country by playing all three at Burnley: “I work in England I have to do these kind of things for the UK! Before I selected the team I said these three players have to play.”

But even though Sterling’s