Pep Guardiola is confident injuries will not derail his Manchester City side as they bid to close out the Premier League title.
The champions are running out of options at the back after Aymeric Laporte and Fernandinho, starting centre-backs at Wolves in midweek, suffered knocks in that game at Molineux.
With John Stones, Ruben Dias and Kyle Walker already ruled out and Nathan Ake not fully fit either, Guardiola is awaiting news of their condition as he plans for Sunday’s trip to West Ham.
But with the finishing line and a fourth title in five years in sight, the City boss expects whoever he picks to rise to the challenge.
“It could be better but I’ve said many times we have to handle these absences,” said Guardiola, whose side head into their penultimate fixture at the London Stadium with a three-point advantage over second-placed Liverpool.
“If there were many games and many months we’d be in big trouble, a big problem, but for one or two games the players will do their best, even those not playing in their position.
“The concentration and the focus (for players) sometimes, when you don’t play in your position, is higher. Like we saw against Wolves, they can do it.”
City put Wolves to the sword as they ran out 5-1 winners with Kevin De Bruyne scoring four. It took their goal tally to 19 in their last four league games and improved their goal difference to seven better than Liverpool’s.
With Liverpool involved in the FA Cup final this weekend, victory for City over the Hammers would see them effectively put one hand on the trophy.
Guardiola feels the job is not done yet, however.
“Things in football change so quickly,” he said. “When you believe it is sorted or it is good and you are in control, it can give you a good punch in the face.
“At the same time when it looks like a disaster, a nightmare, one week can change everything. Before I had just Wolves, now it is just West Ham in my mind.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here