With a FA Cup semifinal loss to Chelsea yesterday, Manchester City saw their quadruple hopes dashed. However, there was a bigger loss to the Cityzens, beyond just the one specific match, and that’s midfielder Kevin De Bruyne. The Belgian injured his ankle at Wembley Stadium yesterday, and we won’t know the extent of the damage until the swelling goes down.
With an injury like this, you can’t do diagnostic scans until the swelling subsides, and thus it could be a couple days until we find out whether there was ligament damage done or not. This was the last thing City needed to happen.
“It doesn’t look good. He has pain,” manager Guardiola said of the late injury to his best important player. “We will see. Tomorrow he will have a test.”
That’s all that’s been said, publicly, at this point about the injury, but Pep will meet with the media again on Tuesday, ahead of the midweek Premier League clash with Aston Villa, and perhaps we will learn more at that time.
With the League Cup Final next weekend and the Champions League semifinals against Paris Saint-Germain a few days after that, the big Belgian would miss out on both, unless the damage proves to be extremely minor. De Bruyne is critical to everything that City do, so obviously, they’ll be hoping for good news from the phyisio.
Guardiola also gave his take on how and why his team lost to the Blues last night.
“They made a goal from a counterattack,” Guardiola said after falling 1-0 to the southwest London club at the national stadium.
“We didn’t create much in the final third and make many one-versus-one actions. But in general, it was a tight game and anything can happen in these types of games. They defended well and are a strong team.
“I know how we reacted in the second half and it was good. We have not had a midweek free for eight months. We have played a lot of games and it will continue.
“Now it is the Premier League, the Carabao Cup next week. It’s just one more game.”
City are still champions-elect of the Premier League, and with or without De Bruyne they will be heavily favored to take the League Cup title, but closing the deal in the Champions League is going to be a tough task.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.