Pep Guardiola is not making plans for Manchester City to be without Erling Haaland just yet after admitting he would be willing to take a risk with the striker's fitness.
Haaland is a major doubt after picking up a groin injury before international duty, and he has not trained this week as he is 'recovering' with City medical staff. Guardiola said Haaland would be assessed on Friday, and a late call would be made on his availability to face Liverpool - hinting that he would take risks at this stage of the season when it came to Haaland's fitness.
And Guardiola also revealed that there were no plans being made for Haaland to miss the game, insisting that whoever he picks to face Liverpool will bring their own qualities to the starting lineup.
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Guardiola had said on Haaland's fitness: "We’ll see today [Friday]. The doctors and especially the player will decide, how does he feel. Yesterday I spoke to him and he feels good. But we’ll see what happens, life is risks in these stages and you have to take it."
Asked whether contingency plans were being made to face Liverpool without Haaland, Guardiola insisted he was calm and would make a late call on the striker.
"No. Because football is about the quality of the players," he replied. "When you play with the typical players you need, there are tactics and skills for every player. Haaland has his skills, and Julián [Alvarez] has his own skills and he gives us one thing and another others, playing with a false nine we have another skill.
"It depends. We saw the people come back yesterday [Thursday] most of them, we couldn’t do much today a little bit and we will see today the last assessment and then we decide."
Overall, Guardiola said he was happy with his squad's fitness after the international break, again giving a philosophical view of the state of his squad ahead of the final two months of the campaign.
He said: "We have incredible physios, trainers, sports science, they control perfectly the players, we have the whole squad ready but at the same time you can have a lot of injuries. We arrive at the end of the season with most of the players available, we’ll see what happens.
"When we are one or two months until the end, mental tiredness doesn’t exist, you see it’s close and everyone knows if we win the game we are still alive, it can happen in November, December. It means we’ve done many good things in a good situation. If we win in the Champions League we are alive and if not we’ll be back."
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