Pep Guardiola's pressing concern isn't the visit of Liverpool next week - it's being able to field a team.
The Manchester City boss has been watching the bulk of his squad at the World Cup in Qatar over the past month and very few have returned thus far. The English champions, who won the EFL Cup for four straight years until they were dethroned last term, will welcome a Reds team who arrive as holders.
Both sides have been dealing with makeshift squads over the last month, albeit Liverpool were fortunate enough to have several of their big names remain on Merseyside. They saw off AC Milan in a friendly on Saturday that featured the likes of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, Thiago and Joel Matip in the starting XI.
City, meanwhile, beat Girona in the week with half of their line-up made up of names few would recognise. Shea Charles, Jadel Katongo, Morgan Rogers and Rico Lewis started alongside more recognisable figures like Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland - who both scored in the routine victory.
Guardiola saw 16 players jet off to the Middle East for the World Cup - more than any other team in England and nine more than the Reds. De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan were the only players to see their team exit in the group stage, hence their early return.
The others all made the knockouts, though, with Julian Alvarez still harbouring hopes of success with Argentina in the final on Sunday. As a result, Guardiola is struggling to pick a competitive side with a place in the last eight of the EFL Cup at stake.
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He said: “At the moment, we have four or five players, and we will have to wait and see how the others come back. But we just don’t have players because the big brains of football decided this schedule and we are going to play this game (against Liverpool).
“Some players are coming back now and in the next few days and step by step, they will re-join their team-mates here. People are coming back soon. Nathan [Ake], Aymer [Laporte], and Rodri, and later the players from the England and Portugal teams.”
Guardiola and City are hoping to get revenge on the Reds, who dealt them their first defeat of the season back in October, when Salah scored the winner at Anfield.
There was always concern this season about the scheduling of the English football calendar, which had to accommodate the first-ever winter World Cup. This round of the EFL Cup could be the fall guy as a result, with clubs set to shuffle their packs as they manage players' workloads following their international commitments.
Guardiola and Klopp were players before turning their hands to coaching and the Catalan had joked that he will roll back the years to help with his selection problems. "He's [Klopp] going to play at left-back, I'm going to play holding midfielder," he said after the draw was made.
"I don't know how many players we will have. If [their national teams] don't get through the group stages, then they will be able to play Liverpool. If not, then we will see. Players will come back, but I don't know in what condition."
City look to have avoided any major injury woes. Manuel Akanji, Aymeric Laporte and Rodri were knocked out in the last 16 whilst the likes of Bernardo Silva, Ruben Dias and Kyle Walker saw their hopes ended in the quarter-finals, which means they will have had 12 days to recover before the Liverpool clash.
That is not accounting for time to travel back to England's north-west, whilst the club will be wanting to assess where the players are at physically. Their involvement in the Qatar tournament will have ensured their remain match fit, but English football is entering its notorious Christmas period, which will see City play five times in 17 days.
