Manuel Pellegrini has said he will play a young team against Chelsea next Sunday, but after the Blues' title hopes took a blow there have been calls for him to change his plans
"My duty is to do what I think is best for this team and if we play on Sunday I think it's better not to play with the professional players." That was Manuel Pellegrini's assessment of Manchester City's FA Cup fifth round clash at Stamford Bridge, controversially scheduled five days after Chelsea's Champions League clash in Paris, and just three days before City's game in Kiev.
The City squad fly to Ukraine less than 24 hours after the game in west London and Pellegrini has suggested that he will field a youthful XI, essentially throwing their FA Cup chances under the bus in order to strengthen their hopes of making the Champions League quarter-finals for the first time.
The landscape of City's season has changed over the last 10 days following consecutive home defeats to Leicester City and Tottenham in the Premier League, and many are now calling for Pellegrini to change his stance and play a strong side against Chelsea and a weaker team in Europe.
The logic, on the face of it, is sound: there is a week before the Chelsea game, plenty of time for the first-teamers to recover, while in the Champions League there is the safety net of a second leg at the Etihad Stadium. A weaker team in Europe would also give the senior players a chance to prepare for the League Cup final, clearly their best shot at silverware this season.
But tempting as it may be, it is quite simply impractical. Given the lengthy injury list which has stretched the squad to its limits, there just aren't enough options - particularly in midfield - that would make a weakened Champions League line-up viable.
Bersant Celina, Manu Garcia and Aleix Garcia - City's best young midfield players - have been on the bench for recent first-team matches, but Aleix Garcia is not actually among City's registered B list of players for European tournaments and the other two have not yet started a senior match.
Of other youngsters to have been named in matchday squads at any point this season, only Angelino and Tosin Adarabioyo are on the B list. They have just 11 minutes of senior action between them, and nine of those belong to Angelino, a left-back (where Aleksandar Kolarov and Gael Clichy can be rotated anyway).
It would also mean the five midfield positions would most likely be made up from three of Yaya Toure, Fernando, Fernandinho and Raheem Sterling anyway, players who would play in strong teams against Chelsea and Liverpool. So that would mean no rest for the most over-worked areas of the squad.
If Pellegrini decides a young team has to be played at some point, it surely cannot be in Europe, where some of best of his youngsters - such as Aleix Garcia and Brandon Barker - cannot even play. If the City boss were to choose youth players who have never previously be in his squad, such as Ellis Plummer, Sinan Bytyqi or Thierry Ambrose, the difficulty of making their debuts in front of 60,000 passionate Ukrainians in freezing temperatures cannot be overestimated.
Another part of the reasoning to prioritise Champions League above FA Cup is that should City beat Chelsea and progress to the quarter-finals, it would force a rescheduling of the Premier League away clash at Norwich City.
"I think that I must do what is better for the club and I think it is better to try to play with the most strongest team in the Champions League," Pellegrini has said, "because also if you continue in the FA Cup you have to postpone two or three games after that and we don’t have any options to play those games during midweek."
Perhaps the Chilean is overplaying it when he says there is no space in the calendar for rescheduled league matches, but it is certainly a factor. The away trip to Newcastle has already been moved due to the League Cup final, and another long journey to East Anglia, most likely in the final weeks of the campaign, is only going to cause more congestion. As a working example, in City's most recent title-winning season they had to face Aston Villa at home in their penultimate match of the campaign after the original had been moved from March 8 - a two-month delay.
By the time City next play a league match, they could be 12 points behind Leicester as it is. The psychological factor of having to play two difficult away matches in the middle of the week in April or May will not make hauling back the leaders, whoever they may be, any easier.
And should City play a strong team and beat Chelsea, the FA Cup quarter-final would fall the weekend before the Champions League second-leg against Kiev, which would most likely require a dramatic rescue act if they were to play a young team in Ukraine. Who's next after that game? Manchester United. There would be no end to the fixture congestion.
Pellegrini's best bet, then, is to carry on as planned. The young lads will not have it easy against Chelsea, and the FA Cup is a great opportunity to win silverware this season, but fielding a weaker team is the best City can do in a bad situation.
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