Haaland has played enough! Citizens crashed out of the Carabao Cup, why didn’t Guardiola field a Norwegian marksman?

Manchester City lost 0:1 to Newcastle United on Wednesday and were eliminated from the Carabao Cup. Pep Guardiola didn’t field his main offensive ace Erling Haaland at all. The Citizens coach subsequently explained why at a press conference.

Over in the round of 16. That’s apparently not what Pep Guardiola’s charges imagined from the current edition of the Carabao Cup. But the opposite is true.

Manchester City failed to score a single goal against Newcastle and with that in mind, they are deservedly out of the aforementioned cup, otherwise known as the EFL Cup.

For coach Guardiola, this is thus the second failure in a relatively short period of time, even though the Citizens are focusing on bigger and more important trophies. The first setback for Manchester City was a Community Shield defeat to Arsenal on penalties.

On the other hand, Manchester won the UEFA Super Cup this season, beating Sevilla also on penalties. The start of the Champions League was also successful for Guardiola and co., they occupy the first place in the Premier League table with 18 points after six matches.

The fact also remains that Guardiola isn’t exactly a fan of the EFL Cup and it was evident in his comments during the press conference.

Probably that is the reason why he didn’t put Erling Haaland in the game at all, or why Kyle Walker didn’t even get on the pitch.

Haaland has played enough!

“Newcastle have a top team defensively. It’s strong in all areas of the game, it works really well. Everybody knows that. And it’s not easy to succeed against them,” Guardiola summed up the game against Newcastle in his press conference.

“Erling Haaland has played a lot of minutes, we still have a lot of games to play. I thought about putting him on for the last 10 or 15 minutes, but I decided not to do that,” he added towards Haaland.

Source: Carabao Cup, Sky Sports