Manchester City’s plans to hand academy products their FA Cup debut at Swindon have been thrown into chaos by the Covid outbreak at the club.
The Blues are reeling from a week where 14 staff members - including Pep Guardiola and his assistant Juanma Lillo - and seven first-team players are all isolating and will not be able to travel to Wiltshire for tomorrow night’s third-round game.
And with fresh cases appearing on a daily basis, the squad plans could alter again, with another round of tests scheduled for tomorrow morning.
The club has not revealed the names of the seven affected players, but Guardiola’s other assistant, Rodolfo Borrell, said that the outbreak has also affected the elite development squad from which they had hoped to draw players and fill up the squad.
This week, centre-back Luke Mbete and midfielders Romeo Lavia and James McAtee have trained with the first-team squad, along with regular Cole Palmer, but there was no sign of Brazilian youngster Kayky, who has made the bench for recent first-team games.
City have not named any of the youngsters who will travel with the squad, but Borrell said that their plans to step up some of the academy kids to fill the gaps left by the outbreak have been hit by the same problem.
“To fill in the whole squad, and to be able to travel with at least five or six subs, we have to bring in some players from the second team, but also the outbreak involves some players from the second team,” said Borrell.
“The second team had plenty of Covid cases, staff as well, but there are no excuses. We will go for the win.”
