Guardiola has disclosed that he “misses” Benjamin Mendy’s presence in the City team, but says he cannot “cry” about it given how they have replaced him and continued to fight for trophies. The French International is now nearing a fresh comeback from a knee injury, having made a 27-minute outing in the Carabao Cup semi-final at the end of January, only to miss the next five games.
He will not feature against Newport in the FA Cup on Saturday although Goal understands he will return to full training next week. “I said many times we miss him, I miss him,” the Catalan said. “He gives us something special, but he has been a long time injured and he cannot come back and immediately play, he has to be in the rhythm of what we want to do.
“But at the same time in these two seasons we cannot complain too much, in the sense that we solved it, with Fabian Delph, with Oleks Zinchenko, with Danilo and another solution with Aymeric Laporte, but of course he’s the only natural player in that position and hopefully he comes back.”
“We miss him but we cannot be crying because he is not there. We have to move forward, wait for him, [he has to] prepare himself and come back, he will be fit, understand what we want to do and fight for his mate to take his position.”
It was reported earlier that Benjamin Mendy’s continued absence from the Manchester City first team has been a source of constant frustration for boss Pep Guardiola and his staff. The Frenchman who was part of the team that won the World cup last summer was still an important part of the first-team plans despite his off-field antics earlier in the season, but City are planning to move on.
Goal reported back in September that Mendy had been banned from being around his team-mates for a week after a string of off-field incidents and repeatedly turning up late for meetings. Guardiola’s staff also felt that Mendy did not pay enough attention when the Catalan was not involved. Yet despite all of that, plus other misdemeanours that led to Guardiola making the 24-year-old move away from the distractions of Manchester city centre, there was still a place for him in the City first team.
Incidentally, Guardiola has become increasingly convinced of Oleksandr Zinchenko’s merits in recent weeks, admiring how the 22-year-old, who was brought to the club as an attacking midfielder, has stood in at left-back in the past year or so. Despite that, however, the desire is for Mendy to not just get back to his best on the pitch, but to change his attitude and become as focused as the majority of his team-mates.