"Now we have a competition that we cannot spend the energy that we spent today, before Leicester, so we're going to play mostly academy players and try to keep the energy for the Premier League."
That was the blunt assessment of Manchester City's injury crisis just one game into the new season by Pep Guardiola.
Having seen off Wolves on Monday night with seven first teamers missing, Guardiola has a three day turnaround before beginning the third defence of the Carabao Cup at home to Bournemouth.
Three days after that, early Premier League leaders Leicester are the visitors.
"With this lack of preparation and seven players out and not coming back soon, we have to keep the players from today as safe as possible," Guardiola continued.
"We will see how many are available, how they recover. We have just three days. We won the Carabao Cup three times in a row and we would like to continue but we don't have the players in this period to play every three days."
So, if Guardiola does turn to the academy, how strong will a predominantly young side actually be against Bournemouth?
Looking at the players available, there is scope to play two completely separate starting XIs for the upcoming games this week, meaning no player has to play more than 90 minutes.
Team 1 - Bournemouth:
This team would have nine changes from the side that beat Wolves, with only Nathan Ake and Phil Foden keeping their places.
Zack Steffen would come in to make his debut in goal, with Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Nicolas Otamendi in central defence. Assuming Eric Garcia is fit after needing stitches to his head, he would be needed at right-back to give Kyle Walker a rest. Similarly, Ake would go out to left-back.
Into midfield, and Tommy Doyle would assume the holding role, with Phil Foden and Adrian Bernabe providing creativity from the centre.
Riyad Mahrez would be needed to carry youngsters Cole Palmer and Felix Nmecha in attack. 17-year-old Liam Delap would deserve a debut from the bench.
Team 2 - Leicester:
As Guardiola hinted, the Leicester game is City's priority this week, so this would largely be the same side that beat Wolves.
Only Aymeric Laporte, with an extra few days of training following his self-isolation, and Ferran Torres, would come in as like-for-like changes for Ake and Foden.
It's not an ideal situation, but at least Guardiola just about has enough options to manage an awkward fixture schedule.
