Pep Guardiola joked he does not have the luxury to make tactical changes at half-time of Manchester City games, confirming that John Stones has picked up a recurrence of his latest injury just 45 minutes into his return.
Stones was rushed back into the starting line up at Aston Villa with Ruben Dias out and Kyle Walker dropped. Stones looked solid enough on the ball but the whole defence were caught napping for Villa's simple direct opener, and Stones did not re-emerge in the second half.
Walker, dropped as his poor form continues, was brought on in his place and City slumped to a 2-1 defeat. Guardiola went into the game without Ederson and Matheus Nunes through injury as well as Dias, with Manu Akanji also giving him a scare as he went down in pain holding his shoulder before completing the game.
"I would say I'm not in the right moment to make tactical and creative changes with some players and where they are at," Guardiola said after the game. "There is a moment where I cannot overthink things right now. I try to be simple, go to the principles to give certainty to the team and the players of what they can do offensively and defensively. This is one of the points. [Stones] said in the last 10 minutes [of the first half] again he had the disturbance that he had in the last month."
And Guardiola bemoaned the never-ending injury cycle that means players are not given enough time to get back to full fitness before breaking down again, especially in defence.
"It's three months. Manu made efforts with a few training sessions and came here and played 90 minutes, Kovacic the same," the manager said.
"I substituted Kova [in the second half] because the game was not right and we had four days and we had a substitution for him.
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