“Perhaps as I am older” – Pep Guardiola reveals new reason behind Manchester City starting XI choices

Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has admitted to basing some of his choices on starting line-ups on a new reason as he has got older.

While Manchester City have their full compliment of players back following the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, a number of starting line-ups in recent games have continued to exclude players who featured at the tournament.

Rico Lewis is one of the stand-out choices to have maintained his position in the starting line-up, keeping both Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo out of the team, despite the pairing maintaining match fitness through training.

But this week, Pep Guardiola has insisted that some of the decisions being made when it comes to deciding on a starting line-up have been based less on football, and more on the body language of his players during the days that lead up to a match.

Speaking after the 1-1 draw with Everton, Pep Guardiola was keen to highlight the difficulty of only picking 11 players from his hugely talented Manchester City squad, but admitted to favouring some players over others, irrespective of their history of performances.

“We have to play with 11 (players) – we cannot play with 13 – and every time it is difficult to choose for me because always top players are not playing,” Pep Guardiola said.

“Mainly lately – perhaps as I am older – I look at the body language in the training sessions and everything. You cannot play good when the body language is not correct. Sometimes I pick them for the body language, for how happy they look and how they are there. This is one of my main decisions when I choose the line-up.

“With the skills I know how good they are, and they know what we want to do. But the body language depends on them and sometimes they are not good.”

Manchester City will be hoping to capitalise on Arsenal’s 0-0 home draw against Newcastle this week, as they travel to face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Thursday night.

Victory against Graham Potter’s side would erase the impact of the draw against Everton at the weekend, and move City back within just five points of league leaders Arsenal at the top of the Premier League table.