Pep Guardiola has always said that national teams won't do Manchester City any favours, so why would he make decisions with the World Cup in mind?
Given the nature of City's world-class squad, Guardiola would have expected most of his players to be involved in the World Cup until mid-December - and they wouldn't be thinking about the Premier League or Carabao Cup while they still had a World Cup to win.
As it happens, two national sides have unintentionally done City a favour by underperforming and crashing out in Qatar at the group stages. So when attentions do turn to City's Carabao Cup clash vs Liverpool in three weeks, Guardiola will have two players available that he won't have been expecting.
