Manchester City have avoided a selection crunch for the FA Cup after an Under-23s game was moved back from Friday to Sunday.
Pep Guardiola is expected to make plenty of changes to his team for their game at League Two side Swindon Town on Friday night, with Cole Palmer and James McAtee leading the youngsters pushing for selection in the Third Round tie.
And, whether it was an intentional consequence or not, City can ensure focus is fully on Swindon because they now do not have to put a team out in the Premier League 2 against Blackburn Rovers on the same night after that fixture was delayed by 42 hours.
While the first team always takes priority, the Blues usually have to contend with fixture clashes around domestic cup games. The Under-21s played in the EFL Trophy this season on the same September night as the first team played Wycombe in the Carabao Cup, with Sam Edozie and Liam Delap among the group of promising youngsters who spent their evening in Doncaster rather than the Etihad.
Changing the Under-23 fixture against Blackburn to later in the weekend means that any EDS player that travels down to Swindon on the Friday night will still be available for the Sunday game even if they start the FA Cup game.
Guardiola has given debuts to six academy players this season — eight including the Community Shield — and had four youngsters on the bench for the Arsenal game owing to injuries and illness among more senior players.
However, he also overlooked all of them but Palmer — who got just four minutes — for the Champions League dead rubber against Leipzig in order to get more of his first team stars into a better rhythm, proving that the Premier League almost always takes priority.
We’ve teamed up with LiveScore to invite fans to vote for their favourite results - the games which were much more than a score. Vote for the match that mattered to you here .
