Pep Guardiola insisted that the upcoming World Cup had no bearing on Manchester City's surprise defeat to Brentford, despite previously admitting some players would have one eye on Qatar this week.
16 of City's players are heading to the World Cup, and ten of them made up Guardiola's line-up against Brentford. Even though Guardiola accepted some players may be wary of avoiding injury in this final fixture before joining their countries, he told national FAs that he wouldn't be resting anyone this weekend.
Guardiola's team selection backed that up, but the performance of those players picked also supported his comments that some could be less committed to this fixture as injury could jeopardise their World Cup involvement. However, Guardiola insisted that it was City's tactics that let him down rather than any World Cup factor.
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"I don’t think so," he said. "I saw how good they trained, how focused they are, but tactically we had problems to control, we struggled to win the long balls from Raya to Toney. You have to be brilliant in smaller spaces and we weren’t able to do it."
Instead, Guardiola said City couldn't cope with Brentford's direct tactics, saying: “The better team won. We had a lot of problems, we couldn’t high press because of the balls [from] keeper to striker.
"In this process we could not win any ball because when Toney flicked the ball he created problems, when Toney kept the ball and played with the three players in the middle he created problems. And we could not regain the ball in the end.
Guardiola also offered injury updates on Aymeric Laporte and Erling Haaland. Laporte was replaced in the week as a precaution but recovered to make the starting XI. In the second half, he suffered a nasty blow to the head and required a bandage after lengthy treatment, but finished the game.
Haaland made his first start in four games but struggled to get involved, however Guardiola said he should be able to link up with Norway for two unofficial friendlies next week.
"Now it’s stitches, hopefully he is well," Guardiola said on Laporte. "I don’t think so [he won't be a problem for the World Cup], he finished good and he continued because he feels ok."
"I don’t know [on Haaland], He made a good effort but he feels it a little bit. We thought the game would be similar and we needed a target man there for the crosses."
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