Pep Guardiola has been rotating his Manchester City centre-backs this season because they can't handle playing every three days.
John Stones is currently out injured with a hamstring injury, while Aymeric Laporte has only recently returned to the side after surgery in the summer. Nathan Ake and Ruben Dias have also had to battle injury issues and Guardiola believes rotation is the only way to keep them fit.
Manuel Akanji has hit the ground running since his £15million move from Borussia Dortmund but there has been plenty of rotation elsewhere in defence, with six different defensive line-ups picked in the last six games. Guardiola insists he would like to have a settled pairing to rely upon, but is making changes to ensure the fitness of his defenders this season.
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"I would love to have the same back four but they cannot handle it. The players we have cannot handle every three days of being fit, other teams might be able to, but we can’t," he said.
"Nathan can’t, Ruben last season, Aymeric came back from a big injury so it’s important for us everyone can play and everyone can perform well. If you want to be in there with all the titles we are fighting for and with the World Cup and be in that position to fight until the end and we need to be ready to fight until the end, otherwise it will be so difficult."
City have kept three clean sheets in their last four games but conceded three times to Manchester United in the other of those fixtures. Guardiola is seeing an improvement in the defensive record of his team this season but insists they can still defend even better.
"Well I would say the last game was better. In general it’s good but we can do better in many aspects but in general I’m happy," he said.
"If we have a period when we play three games in three days we don’t have much time to analyse or think about the situation. After Liverpool we have one week and have more time but now and yesterday we just prepare.
"You don’t have much time to reflect on how we’re attacking or defending, it’s just now it’s Copenhagen for the next game. So we just review the game and what we can do better.
"In the first half they played four at the back, in the second half they played five at the back and we have to think how we have to handle both situations if they decide to play both ways. I don’t have much time now to think about specific situations.
"In general it’s good because in the last two games we have played better, scored a lot of goals and conceded few and conceded few chances. It is the level we had in the previous four or five seasons and I like that, it means the team is still here, it didn’t disappear, this is good."
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