ETIHAD STADIUM, MANCHESTER — Ninety-six hours before Manchester City’s do-or-die UEFA Champions League game at home to Club Brugge, Pep Guardiola took the unusual step of effectively confirming a selection decision.
John Stones will start a game where anything less than three points for the 2022/23 winners will end their participation before the knockout stages.
“Listen, he has to play,” Guardiola said after Stones replaced embattled new signing Abdukodir Khusanov eight minutes into the second half of Saturday’s 3-1 comeback win over Chelsea. “Unless he says to me that he promises he cannot play.”
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While Rodri’s ACL injury was the blast that left City’s Premier League title defence mortally wounded, the relentless procession of defensive injuries have infected the scar tissue and gotten into the very bones of Guardiola’s team.
Ruben Dias is out with an abductor problem, his third muscular injury of the season that means he is now as frequent a visitor to the treatment table as Nathan Ake. Both will miss the Brugge game. Manuel Akanji has also suffered with abductor pain but has soldiered on for the most part, for both better and worse in terms of in terms of individual and collective performances.
Why is John Stones not playing?
Stones is a different case. He is managing a bone spur issue in his foot. The pain from that has seen his past two starts for City — versus Tottenham on November 23 and at Aston Villa on December 21 —curtailed at halftime. Those games also account for half of his Premier League starts in 2024/25.
A flagship signing from Guardiola’s first summer in charge of City in 2016, injuries have been a constant during a decorated decade in east Manchester for the 30-year-old.
“John always had these kind of situations, except the year of the treble when he was incredibly reliable,” Guardiola said ruefully. “It’s the same with Nathan and that’s why we went to the market. I wouldn’t like to go to the market in this period but we have a lot of examples of [players] not being able to go every three days. This is the problem.”
Alongside Khusanov, 20, the 19-year-old Vitor Reis was in a City matchday squad for the first time against Chelsea. Stones was the future once and has unquestionably achieved everything expected of him and more since he joined City from Everton aged 22, eight and a half years ago.
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Will John Stones leave Man City?
As one of the first building blocks in the Guardiola dynasty, Stones will have noted his friend and fellow defender Kyle Walker joining AC Milan this month, while Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne are out of contract in the summer. Although he has a few years on that trio, that pesky fitness record makes Stones vulnerable to the City revamp that has been hurried forward to launch in this window.
“I prefer to see him back because as a defender, especially reading situations, he is so, so good,” Guardiola said. “I have no doubts on John or even Nathan, but they have not been here. And last season they have not been here either, so this is the problem.
“There are players who are reliable and players who have more problems than others. Hopefully now, this time, he has recovered better. He played really good in this 40 minutes and has to make the effort for Wednesday, to give time for Ruben and Nathan to come back.
“The situation is tough. It continues to be tough.”
Things certainly are tough for Guardiola, considering Stones is a player who he once said “looks like he was my son”. But the sentimentality that informed moves such as Gundogan’s return has been abruptly parked at City.
If this is the start of a long goodbye, it must be hoped that a sublime footballer’s body plays ball. As one of Guardiola’s most maligned and then most successful projects, the popular and persevering Stones deserves as much.
