Advantage Manchester City as title rivals prepare to lose key players
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Manchester City will hope to take advantage of their rivals missing key players as they seek to move up the table.
PHOTO: REUTERS
LONDON – Manchester City could have an advantage in the English Premier League title race in the coming weeks as their rivals face up to losing key players to the Africa Cup of Nations and Asian Cup.
As the Premier League emerges from a frantic set of festive fixtures with only six points separating the top five, managers will be busy drawing up contingency plans.
Some will likely deem it necessary to dip into the transfer market to make up for the loss of some top performers.
But while Liverpool will lose Egyptian star forward Mohamed Salah and Tottenham Hotspur will have to make do without their talismanic South Korean captain Son Heung-min, City will be unaffected.
The champions are third in the standings on 40 points, five behind Liverpool and two behind Aston Villa, albeit with a game in hand. Arsenal are level on points with City but trail on goal difference, while Tottenham are fifth on 39 points.
City boss Pep Guardiola does not have a single player jetting off to either the Ivory Coast or Qatar for the continental tournaments that start on Jan 13 and Jan 12 respectively and run for almost a month.
Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, meanwhile, will have to wave goodbye to Salah, who with 14 goals is the joint-top scorer in the Premier League this season, equal with City’s Erling Haaland.
They will also be missing combative midfielder Wataru Endo, who will join up with Japan. “It’s a bit of a shame how he found his feet and now he goes to the Asian Cup,” Klopp said of the Samurai Blue skipper.
Surprise title challengers Villa will lose only squad player Bertrand Traore to Burkina Faso but Arsenal will be harder hit with Mohamed Elneny (Egypt) and Takehiro Tomiyasu (Japan) heading off for an unspecified amount of time, depending on the progress of their nations.
“I want the Asian Cup to be played in June, the same as the Euro,” Tomiyasu said.
“I don’t know why we are playing in January – not only the Asian Cup but the Africa Cup of Nations as well. It’s not good for the players.”
Tottenham have been bedevilled by injuries in the last couple of months and now manager Ange Postecoglou will have to adapt to Son, who has scored 12 league goals, representing South Korea.
Spurs also lose midfielder Yves Bissouma to Mali while Pape Matar Sarr, who was injured against Bournemouth over the weekend, is part of Senegal’s squad.
Resurgent West Ham United, who are sixth, will be hampered by the loss of Ghanaian midfielder Mohammed Kudus and Moroccan defender Nayef Aguerd.
Manchester United’s under-pressure manager Erik ten Hag could do without losing Andre Onana (Cameroon) and Sofyan Amrabat (Morocco) as he tries to turn around what has been a dreadful season so far.
Regardless of what happens in the Premier League with all these absences, Guardiola is focused on only one thing – winning a sixth league title in seven seasons for City. “We want to be there,” he said in December.
“I know we are not top of the league, but a lot of things are going to happen. There will be a lot of surprises and the thing is to be there.”
At the other end of the table, Nottingham Forest are the worst hit as they prepare to make do without six players for the next few weeks, including Ivory Coast trio Serge Aurier, Willy Boly and Ibrahim Sangare.
Struggling Brentford will be without midfielders Saman Ghoddos (Iran) and Frank Onyeka (Nigeria) along with striker Yoane Wissa (Congo) and reserve defender Kim Ji-soo (South Korea).
The Premier League takes a breather this weekend with the FA Cup third round taking precedence, while all clubs will have one of the two following weekends off in a mini-winter break.
By that stage, the group phase of the Africa Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup will be virtually over, meaning some players may be heading back. REUTERS
