Pep Guardiola pleased as Man City show squad depth in cup win over Brentford | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola admitted to making a mistake when wholesale changes to his Manchester City side backfired against Bayer Leverkusen last month but as he looks forward to taking on a “crazy” January schedule he found a better balance for Wednesday’s 2-0 Carabao Cup win over Brentford.

Granted, the challenge of playing against a Bees side themselves showing six changes from the weekend was very different to a Champions League match, but Guardiola was impressed with the energy shown both by those given their opportunity and those who came off the bench.

Nico Gonzalez, Nico O’Reilly, Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki were the only survivors from Sunday’s 3-0 win at Crystal Palace, with the likes of Oscar Bobb and Savinho given their chance to press for more playing time – although in Bobb’s case the night ended prematurely through a hamstring injury.

City took a little time to settle but were the much more dangerous team, taking the lead through Cherki’s outstanding 32nd-minute strike before Savinho’s deflected effort doubled the lead and effectively settled it midway through the second half.

“We changed Rico (Lewis), (Abdukodir) Khusanov, Nathan (Ake), Divine (Mukasa), these players that didn’t play much recently performed really well,” Guardiola said.

“We have a good result, we struggled in the first 10-15 minutes to take the game but after that came the two actions with Savinho and Oscar in behind. I am really pleased with the impact from the guys who came off the bench.

“In the second half, Rayan Cherki didn’t do the job he has to do defensively, he didn’t have the energy to do it, Savinho neither, that is why we needed the impact from Josko (Gvardiol), Matheus (Nunes) and Bernardo (Silva) helped us a lot to increase our rhythm.”

In the build-up to this game Guardiola had made it clear he would make changes with Saturday’s Premier League match against West Ham seen as the priority given the schedule means City can go top, at least temporarily, with victory and put pressure on Arsenal.

Victory over Brentford put City into a two-legged semi-final against Newcastle and means Guardiola’s side will face nine fixtures in January alone, highlighting the importance of squad depth in a season where the Catalan has made relatively few changes to his starting XI in the league.

“We have had a run of a lot of games and Ruben (Dias) and the others have to be ready,” Guardiola added. “After (West Ham) we have seven days before Nottingham (Forest), then five days until Sunderland and then a crazy schedule.

“Everybody has to be connected. The guys that stay on the bench have to be connected and they proved it. Matheus was so connected, Bernardo is always there, when Josko (Gvardiol) arrived he was incredibly committed.”